After Careful Consideration
by Candle At Noon
Summary: Rejection is never easy to handle. But when Sora's done with all of the ones he's received from colleges, he might have to risk just one more.... Riku/Sora AU
1. Rejection

The first one came on a Tuesday. It didn't seem right, Sora thought, for it to come on a Tuesday. He had three long nights of homework and three mind-numbing days of school before he could spend a healthy day melting his brain in front of the TV, avoiding anyone who called, pretending it didn't hurt….

The second came that Friday. Sora supposed that was a bit fairer seeing as he wouldn't have to face his friends until Monday, but still, he had hoped for at least a little more time to recover. It wasn't supposed to come for another four days, anyway, so Demyx wouldn't bother him about it. He could spend the weekend blissfully question-free, practicing the bridge of that one song on his acoustic or watching stupid YouTube videos or finally figuring out where his AP Environmental Science book had gotten to. Hell, he could laze around and finish that entire manga series Kairi had loaned to him (he still couldn't figure out why Kairi had done it, but he was grateful anyway—he spent so much money on comic books that he cringed at the thought of buying a twelve-book series for ten bucks a pop.)

Twelve mangas, no textbook and one tricky guitar part later, Sora still felt like shit.

Things didn't get any better the next week. Wednesday was a big day, and Sora went into it grinning at everyone and tossing good luck wishes like used tissues and came out faking weak smiles and congratulating people half-heartedly. He had to squeeze the words out like that last bit of toothpaste that stares at you from just inside the tube, almost at the rim but not quite, mocking you.

He gave himself a swift mental kick. When you start comparing life to a used-up tube of toothpaste, either things are really dismal or you need to stop waxing poetic and grow some balls.

And then there was Demyx. Of _course_ his spring break started Wednesday. Of _course_ Sora was going to pick him up from the airport right after school on Thursday because Demyx was a douche and had gotten his license suspended. (It was totally that weird Larxene kid's fault, Sora _knew_ it, but Demyx wouldn't tell him anything.) And yeah, hanging out with Demyx was usually great—seriously, Demyx was the only one of his friends who didn't call him a pansy when he ordered a hot chocolate at Starbucks—but Sora needed time. Sora needed space.

"Soooo? Am I gonna see you around next year or what, pipsqueak?"

Sora most definitely did _not_ need that.

The spiky-haired brunette drummed his thumbs against his steering wheel as he navigated the twisting airport exit street (he hoped it was the exit, anyway.) Demyx eyed him expectantly. After a moment's thought, Sora turned up the volume. His iPod chose that moment to switch to an irritatingly loud DragonForce song, so he turned the volume back down. He peered at his friend out of the corner of his eye, looked back to road, chewed his bottom lip. Nearly missed the right turn labeled "Exit to Atlantica Avenue."

"RGU rejected me, Dem," he said finally.

Sora could almost imagine he heard an audible thud as Demyx's jaw hit the floor (or car carpet, anyway.)

"Dude, no way! You're like… smarter than me an' shit. No way," Demyx said, putting his bare feet up on Sora's dashboard. "Jebus. I'm sorry, man." There was a moment in which they both appreciated ZP Theart's vocal abilities, followed by Demyx tentatively asking, "So… how 'bout the rest?"

Sora let out an earnest sigh. "U of HB, Pride Lands College, Traverse Town University, and U of DI all rejected me, too," he muttered. He scratched vigorously at the back of his head, temporarily flattening a few spikes in the process.

Demyx stared at him stupidly before asking, "What's left?"

"Leonhart."

"Well you hafta get in there," Demyx assured him. "They'd kill babies to get their hands on a kid like you."

"With my luck, I'll end up at Destiny Islands College," Sora mumbled. DIC was the local community college. It was also where all of the idiots at Sora's high school who had never gone to a day of class in their lives would end up. Just where Sora wanted to be.

"Nothin' wrong with that," Demyx said defensively. "Axel goes there, y'know."

"Axel once lit his own hair on fire."

"In his defense, Seifer spiked the punch pretty bad that night."

Sora snorted. "He also lights his socks on fire at parties."

Demyx considered this carefully for the remainder of the wildly flailing guitar solo screaming out of Sora's speakers. Then he opened his mouth, shut it, tugged at a piece of his hair, wiggled his toes, turned towards the car window and said, "Let's get smoothies."

Sora couldn't help but grin widely.

oo000OOO000oo

Smoothie Planet was wildly popular with the students of Destiny High, and Sora had no problem with that. He liked his peers, and, well, he liked people on principle. Sure, college was bound to come up every time he talked to anyone now, but he still liked people. They made him laugh. They kept things interesting.

When they were Demyx, they stole his smoothie.

"Give that back, dumbass," Sora demanded, laughing. He swiped at Demyx's hands.

Demyx dangled the disturbingly orange drink just out of Sora's reach. "Jump, Shorty!"

Sora's face was just teetering precariously on the edge of a pout when something silver caught his eye from over Demyx's shoulder. The near-pout evaporated and was replaced by a look of confusion, then recognition, then indecision—

"What?" Demyx asked. He slurped patiently at Sora's smoothie.

"I know him," Sora said.

Demyx turned his head to look over his shoulder at the tall, silver-haired guy who had just entered with his slate-haired friend. "What, the shiny one or the emo one?" he asked. Sora snagged his smoothie back before Demyx could turn around.

"The shi—the tall one. Riku," Sora said. "Grody, Dem, you got my straw all slobbery."

"Then let's go say hi," Demyx said, and he was pushing Sora toward where Riku stood in line before Sora knew what was happening. Sora, however, caught on pretty quickly and turned right back around.

"I didn't mean I _know_ him, Demyx, I mean I just know him," he hissed.

Demyx hit himself lightly in the forehead with the palm of his hand. "Well, golly, why didn't you just say so? _Now_ I understand," he told his younger friend, rolling his eyes.

Sora sighed exasperatedly before explaining, "No, I mean… he's like, in Jazz Band, but I don't really know him. He's our piano player."

Demyx grinned wickedly and whispered, "Well guess who you're meeting today."

Sora noticed too late that Riku and his friend were walking in their direction because (of course) Sora and Demyx were still standing right by the counter where they had picked up their smoothies. And judging by the finger prodding Sora hard in the ribs, there was no way Demyx would let him get out of this one.

"H-hey Riku," Sora stuttered. Great. Had he seriously just stuttered? Could Sora manage to squeak out two words without sounding like a dork? He flicked his bright blue eyes away from Riku self-consciously.

If Riku was surprised, he didn't show it.

"Hey Sora," he responded, smiling with one corner of his mouth. His friend hung back behind his shoulder and eyeballed them warily. "What's up?"

"Nothing," Sora responded. He had stuttered. What the hell. Freakin' Dem—

"Being dragged around by me, mostly," Demyx chimed in. Sora wondered briefly if his blonde friend was just too stupid to be intimidated by the laid-back, awesomely cool… er, awesome coolness that was Riku. But Demyx blundered on unawares. "I come back to haunt him every time RGU's on break. I'm Demyx."

"Riku," said Riku by way of introduction. "You go to RGU?" he asked. He arched one silver eyebrow—he seemed impressed.

"Yep. Music major. I went to Hollow Bastion High before that, so you wouldn't have seen me around," Demyx explained. Still blissfully unaware of the sheer amount of cool he was staring in the face, he glanced at Riku's friend. "Hi."

Riku half-smiled again and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. "That's Zexion. He goes to Destiny High with me and Sora." Zexion gave a short wave of acknowledgment.

Sora felt quite distinctly that he was watching a game of verbal ping pong fly over his head, and this was one game in which he was sorely left out. He wondered if he should bother trying to say anything, but elected to ruefully rub the back of his neck and grin instead. It was easier than trying to think of something to say to his jazz band's piano player, anyway. Safer, too, he thought. Stupid stuttering.

"Riku, Zex," called out the freckly chick at the counter as she set two smoothies down. Sora choked back a sigh of relief.

"Well, we've got to go," said Riku. He held out a hand toward Demyx. "Nice meeting you, Demyx," he said, and the two shook hands (the blonde looking mildly surprised.) Riku then turned to Sora and, with a slight head toss (chin toss?), said, "See you around, Sora."

"See you tomorrow," Sora managed to say. He deliberately avoided watching Riku and Zexion grab their drinks and then exit Smoothie Planet.

"Bah, that wasn't so hard," Demyx told his friend. Sora was still staring determinedly at the blue tile beneath his left foot. When the brunette didn't respond, Demyx rested an elbow on his shorter friend's shoulder. "Right?"

"Sure why not," mumbled Sora. It was his fault, really, for letting Demyx convince him to go to Smoothie Planet in the first place. Oh, Demyx, with his remarkable ability to strike up conversations with complete strangers….

"It's not like he was a complete stranger or anything, Small Fry," Demyx said, rolling his eyes. "You said he's in Jazz Band, right? Besides, he seemed pretty cool. Actually shook my hand, didja see that?" he asked rhetorically. He nodded to himself before gnawing on the end of his straw thoughtfully. "Nice kid. Dunno about the quiet one, but Riku's a nice kid."

Sora shook his head in wonderment before wandering out the door.

Demyx looked after him, bewildered. "What? …Hey, Sor? What'd I say?" Sora couldn't hear him, anyway, so the blonde just shrugged and followed his friend out. He would never really understand that kid.


	2. Pulling Through

Jeez, that got way more attention than I expected! :D Much thanks to all who added ACC to their alerts, and reviews are, of course, _greatly_ appreciated. Enjoy the next chapter!

xxXXxx

Friday and waaay too early to care. The sun hadn't even bothered to climb all the way over the horizon yet. Sora's arm snaked out from under his covers and fumbled with his alarm clock until it located the snooze button (for the third time,) after which the dark room fell comfortably silent. He rolled on to his back to stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars he had stuck up on it some long ago afternoon spent with Kairi. They weren't actually glowing, but he could make out their indistinct outlines through the darkness.

He yawned hugely. Alright, so despite Demyx's infuriating ways, the mullet-headed dope had actually managed to cheer him up pretty well. Demyx had a way of cheering everyone up just by being in their general vicinity. Sora did, too, but he had yet to realize it.

And there was the whole Riku encounter. Sora rolled his eyes. Okay, so he had always given the piano player more space than was strictly necessary, but Demyx had no right to surprise the poor guy like that. Sora pitied the unfortunate souls forced to face Demyx unprepared.

Sora had just drifted into a blissful doze when the silence was shattered by two loud clicks followed by the whine of someone sorely misusing a guitar.

Sora hated that radio. The only station it got clearly was country.

He rolled over to grope for the cord of his lamp and toppled neatly out of bed to faceplant in thick carpet when something barked from somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

"Ow."

The brunette rolled over and grumbled indistinctly before a fluffy, wriggling something catapulted itself off the bed and on to his chest, after which it energetically attacked his face with a tiny wet tongue.

"Vivi," Sora moaned. "You dork."

The tiny dog took this as a cue to attack Sora's face with more enthusiasm. Sora gave him an obliging scritch behind his pointed little ears. Vivi was a poorly mismatched creature—the shelter had advertised him online as a Pomerpoo, but he looked more like a cross between a Chihuahua and an oversized dust bunny: dusty white with big tan spots, obscenely fluffy, but inexplicably cute. He made Sora proud.

The door creaked, and Roxas managed to say "Hey, So, time to—" before spotting the twisted mass of blankets on the floor that most likely contained his twin. Vivi's targeting system quickly 

reordered its priorities and led the dog bounding towards Roxas' ankles, which were subjected to a furious and thorough bathing. Roxas shook his head emphatically. He scooped up the yapping dog, grudgingly said, "Just get up," and set off to find something that might serve as breakfast.

"Nngh," protested Sora.

"Sheee's got my nose, got her momma's eyes," sang his radio consolingly. Sora buried his face in his bed sheets and growled. Well, at least it was finally Friday.

Fifteen minutes later, Sora tripped out of his front door with an armful of books and binders, a guitar case, and a Poptart between his teeth. He had yet to tie his left shoe, and his battered blue Converse sneaker reminded him of this neglect by slipping farther off his foot with each step he took. By the time he had safely deposited his books and guitar in the trunk, his shoe's insidious plan was complete. He climbed into the passenger seat with a shoe in one hand and a Poptart in the other.

"Glad you could make it," grunted Roxas. Sora crammed his Poptart back into his mouth and used his newly freed hand to ruffle Roxas' hair, earning himself an even more vigorous hair ruffle. The twins grinned at each other for a moment before Roxas pulled the car away from the curb.

"Freakin' zero period. Remind me why I get up this early," Sora mumbled around his Poptart as he pushed up the long sleeves of his black-and-blue striped shirt and yanked his left shoe on.

"Chicks," Roxas responded immediately. "They dig the whole sensitive, guitar-playing pansy thing."

Sora shoved his brother good-naturedly. "Dick."

"Fuckwit."

"Asshat."

Half of Sora's Poptart migrated with surprising speed from his mouth to his lap. He narrowed his eyes at it as he finished tying his shoe. "Nutbunnies," the brunette muttered, picking at crumbs on his lap. They drove in silence for a few minutes as Sora tried in vain to un-wreak the havoc his vengeful breakfast item had wreaked on his jeans.

"So," began Roxas. Sora deemed his jeans a hopeless case and looked up expectantly, but Roxas kept his eyes on the road. "Sounds like Seifer's coming back."

There was a moment of silence followed by the small, dry sound of Sora's breakfast falling on to his lap once more. His blonde twin glanced at him quickly, but Sora didn't meet his gaze—he was staring at the crumbled mess on his lap. His bright blue eyes were vacant, unfocused, and he didn't look up when he quietly asked, "What?"

"Seifer," repeated Roxas warily. "Next week he comes back from—"

"Why?" Sora demanded.

"He was just suspended, not expelled," Roxas said, changing lanes to speed past an unfortunately slow old lady. "I guess he wanted to graduate from Destiny High instead of wherever they sent him."

Sora's gaze inched up the side of the car door and out of the window. Fantastic. Not only did he have the rest of the school year to explain to everyone that no, he _hadn't _been accepted to U of HB, thanks, and no, he _wasn't_ going to Pride Lands College, he also had the rest of the school year to deal with Seifer. "Aw, son of a biscuit," he said finally, and he felt that pretty much summed it up.

His mood hadn't improved by the time he set his guitar case down next to the school amp in the Band Room. He was in the process of flicking open the clasps on his guitar case as if each had wronged him personally when he noticed a shadow looming over him, blocking out the lights, drawing nearer—

"Y'know, Lux, you're not as scary as you think," Sora observed.

An arm came down to rest on his head. "Ah, no need to put on a brave face, Sora," said a familiar English voice. "I know you're secretly quaking in your boots, praying I'll spare you but fearing the worst anyway, dreading your imminent doom…."

"I'd be more worried about _your_ imminent doom if you don't get your arm off my head," griped Sora. Luxord obligingly removed his arm. Sora rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Was it because of his size? Was that why all of his friends harassed him incessantly? He'd grown a lot in the past few years, but he felt like everyone's mental image of him had remained unchanged: he was and always would be short, scrawny Sora, a "little brother" kind of guy, still receiving noogies at the age of eighteen.

Of course, if he had ever taken a moment to be entirely honest with himself, he would have had to concede that he didn't dislike it as much as he said he did.

"Cheer up, Buttercup," suggested Luxord. Sora ignored him, pulling his dark blue Ibanez Artcore from its snug, velvety bed and seating himself on a stool before plugging it into the amp. Luxord could be a fantastic pain, but he was the only person left who had been in Jazz Band with Sora his freshman year, and that had to count for something. Sora pitied the band mates he'd be leaving behind when they graduated, because they'd be hard pressed to find a new guitarist _and_ a new drummer (who didn't suck royally, anyway.)

Luxord patted Sora fondly on the shoulder and wandered off to twiddle his drumsticks or do whatever it was drummers did when they weren't making loud noises. Sora, after making sure that Luxord had truly walked away, looked up from fiddling with his guitar's tuning pegs just in time to meet the gaze of one silver-headed piano player. The tall boy smiled at him, and a somewhat surprised Sora grinned back nervously before his courage escaped him entirely and left him glancing quickly away to twist the peg of a string he'd already tuned. He didn't know why it was so difficult to meet Riku's gaze. It probably had something to do with the guy's messy ponytail or his fingerless gloves. Sora glanced at him again (he'd looked away already, thank God) to examine the kid's ears. He had enough piercings to rival Luxord's formidable collection. Sora had never noticed that before.

The second bell rang, and Sora resigned himself to what promised to be a long day.

oo000OOO000oo

By the end of fourth period, Sora was ready to gnaw off his own fingers as an excuse to go home.

"Shoot me," he mumbled into his hands. Kairi plopped down next to him on the brick planter and held out her bag of animal crackers toward him, but he waved the bag away.

"Be glad you didn't have to deal with Mr. Highwind today," she assured him. "He's like, the craziest substitute ever. He tried to confiscate my graphing calculator. In a _math_ class. Seriously."

"That's because you spent half the period playing Block Dude," said Pence, plopping down on Sora's other side. Olette sat down next to him, carefully using a napkin to dab grease off of her pizza slice.

"Shush, you," Kairi said. "You're too young to understand."

"I'm only a junior," mumbled Pence, but Olette cut in before he could say anything else.

"So are you guys going to the bonfire?" she asked anxiously, crumpling up her napkin.

Sora pulled a hand a few inches from his eyes so he could see Olette. "What bonfire?" he questioned.

"The one tomorrow," she told him. "It sounds really fun," she added. When this failed to pique Sora's interest, she said, "C'mon, a lot of people will be there. Kairi and Pence will be there, right?" The two she had named exchanged an amused glance before shrugging and nodding. "Roxas already said he's coming, so I bet Hayner will, too."

Sora's face fell back into his palms. If Roxas planned on going, he'd probably need someone to drive him home afterwards…. "Sure. Alright."

"Where am I going?" asked a familiar voice. Sora dropped his hands and looked up at his twin.

"The bonfire," said Olette.

Kairi snorted. "Ha! That's right," she said half to herself. "Riku's going."

Sora said "Hm?" just as Olette blushed furiously and Roxas shoved his hands in his pockets and glared moodily at the ground.

"That's why Olette wants to go," announced Kairi smugly. "Am I wrong? Hmmm?"

Sora, tired and somewhat confused, rested his chin on his fist and offered, "I saw him at Smoothie Planet yesterday." He had a way of pulling out whatever facts he could when he didn't trust himself to actually add to a conversation.

Olette said nothing, but Roxas mumbled, "He's not that great."

With a decidedly self-satisfied expression, Kairi smirked at one of her animal crackers before crunching its head between her teeth.

The rest of the lunch period passed uneventfully (perhaps excepting the part where Hayner stormed up, cursed unintelligibly at no one in particular, sat down with his back against the planter and refused to talk to anyone for the next twenty some-odd minutes, but besides that, really, it passed uneventfully.) The bell signaling the end of their freedom rang and Sora set off towards AP Art History with Kairi in tow.

"So I was thinking," said Kairi, and Sora had to bite his lip to prevent himself from saying one of the dozen jokes he could respond to that phrase with, "that we should see a movie together tonight."

Sora frowned. "Sorry, I already promised Demyx I'd—wait, you haven't seen him since he got back, have you?" Kairi shook her head. "Great, then we should all go see something! I know he wants to see you."

Kairi looked momentarily taken aback, but then she straightened her skirt and pushed back her red-brown bangs and cleared her throat and said, "Yeah, okay, that would be cool."

Sora shifted his books from one hand to the other. Yeah, that _would_ be cool. Maybe it would keep his mind off of college… and Seifer. _Frackin' A,_ he thought. _I'd forgotten about him._ A small cloud condensed into existence above his head and threatened to rain on his parade, but he waved it away. _Movie. Think about the movie._

Kairi trailed behind him, frowning at her shoes.

oo000OOO000oo

"Hey, hey, can I tell you a secret?"

Sora rolled his eyes at Demyx and whispered back, "What?"

"This movie sucks. Hard."

Sora giggled. He couldn't disagree. He leaned across Demyx to grab a handful of his popcorn, successfully giving his blonde friend a faceful of spiky hair. Sora leaned back in his seat and offered Kairi some of his stolen goods, but she shook her head.

"Marly would fuckin'… implode if he saw this shit. Even he couldn't stand something this cheeseball," Demyx whispered. He shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

"Too bad he's not here," muttered Kairi.

Demyx gave her a strange look before devouring another fistful of popcorn. Without bothering to swallow first, he whispered, "God this sucks. The only thing this movie would be good for is a prolonged make-out sesh."

"Again, too bad he's not here."

Sora laughed, but Demyx stopped mid-chew and frowned at her. She stared steadfastly at the screen. Bewildered, Sora looked back and forth between the two of them. Neither of them said anything else, and after a minute, Demyx went back to scarfing popcorn and laughing at the horrible dialogue, but with considerably less enthusiasm than before.

Sora slumped down in his seat and perched his Converse on the seat in front of him. At least there was the bonfire to look forward to. How bad could that be, right?


	3. A World in a Grain of Sand

With wind in his hair, sand between his toes, and copious amounts of marshmallow still stuck to his fingers, Sora couldn't figure out how anyone could hate going to the beach. He'd spent half an hour complaining about the bonfire before Roxas had finally punched him in the arm, grabbed the car keys, and threatened to drive off without him, but now that he was here—well, the stupid grin on his face said it all. He sucked happily at his fingers before wiping them futilely on the giant blue beach towel he shared with Kairi.

The aforementioned redhead had commandeered his acoustic guitar three minutes previously and now sat strumming it, and what she lacked in talent, she made up for in determination. She attempted a G major chord in at least six different ways before Sora leaned over and shifted one of her fingers up one string. She silently thanked any celestial beings within earshot that it was too dark for anyone to witness her fierce blush.

Eavesdropping celestial beings aside, the bonfire had attracted a large and curiously assorted number of people.

On one side of the fire pit: Sora, Kairi, and Sora's guitar sharing one beach towel; Axel and Demyx lying in the sand and giggling senselessly. On the other side: Pence, Olette, and Naminé (Sora knew her as "that chick in jazz band with a cool black saxophone") sharing another beach towel and looking more than a little worried by Demyx and Axel's erratic laughter. Somewhere in the not-so-distant distance: Hayner, Luxord, Roxas and a few people Sora didn't know engaging in what promised to be a highly amusing and somewhat drunken game of—it was _probably_ volleyball, Sora had watched a volleyball travel in that direction earlier, but the players seemed to have abandoned all of the usual rules and created their own. As far as Sora could tell, the new rules were as follow: 1) Knock people over, and 2) Yell. A lot.

Sora took a moment from correcting Kairi's sadly misused chords to listen in on whatever Axel and Demyx found so incredibly hilarious.

"They seriously _exploded_?" said Demyx before laughing like a drunken banshee.

"I had to buy them a new microwave," slurred Axel. He glowed with pride. "They threatened to make me pay rent after that."

A sudden flurry of movement on the other side of the bonfire pit drew Sora's attention. Pence and Naminé were forcibly restraining Olette from making a break for the dark ocean, and Sora wondered for a second if the sweet, quiet girl had finally snapped (it was only a matter of time) before he heard Kairi smother a laugh and say, "Oh, seriously, just talk to him."

Sora glanced over his shoulder. It took him a moment of careful scrutiny to figure out what had Olette scrambling to get away, but he eventually spotted two figures weaving around all of the other crowded bonfire pits on the beach. One was clearly Riku, but Sora had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the dark before he could make out Riku's friend from Smoothie Planet. Whatever his name was. Crap.

While Sora frantically ransacked his memory (did it have an X in it? Did it _start _with an X?), Riku and the Nameless Wonder entered the circle of wavering light cast by the fire pit. Riku looked casual, though not particularly beachy—he had on jeans and a grey hooded sweater with the sleeves rolled up and the top few buttons undone, and his hair was in a loose ponytail, his eyes partially obscured by bangs. Sora 

suppressed a grin at the memory of Demyx calling Riku "the shiny one," mostly because it was completely true. Riku's hair reflected firelight like polished silver.

"Hey, Zexion, hey Riku," someone near Sora's feet slurred happily. In a show of inebriated determination, Demyx groped in the sand for a moment, located a half-empty plastic cup, and then dragged himself up into a sitting position in a process requiring far too many joints and odd angles. Half of his face was finely dusted with sand. "What's shakin', kiddos?"

Right. Zexion. That almost started with an X….

"Hey. Demyx, right?" asked Riku. He looked unfazed by Demyx's remarkable lack of coordination, though Riku rarely seemed fazed by anything. In fact, Sora would bet his crappy beach guitar that if a massive army of gargantuan tentacled alien pandas were to descend from the heavens with battle axes, lasers and a taste for human flesh, Riku would give them all a quick once over before proceeding to feed them their own limbs, at which point they would realize the stupidity of their plan and flee with their tails between their tentacles. Afterwards, when he was surrounded by the lifeless bodies of thousands of strange furry sucker-y things, Riku might deign to look mildly annoyed.

"—ra. _Sora_," someone said. Sora's daydream world of panda invasions swiftly imploded, leaving him face-to-face with a dubious Kairi.

"Um," he said. He caught Riku's eye over her shoulder. "Hi Riku."

"Hey Sora," Riku responded. _I wonder what it's like to have a ponytail,_ thought Sora.

"Sora!" snapped Kairi. Sora refocused his eyes on hers. When had she stood up? "I'm going up the hill to buy some more marshmallows. Want to come?"

"I'll go!" squeaked Olette hastily. Sora couldn't blame her for wanting to leave. She looked about ready to explode.

"Nah, I'm good," Sora said.

Kairi, swiftly calculating the addition of Olette to their party, said, "Aw, c'mon, you could probably get Riku or his friend to come, too." She pretended she couldn't see the tiny, convulsive head shakes that Olette was sending in her direction.

Sora considered the matter for a good three seconds. "Nah. I should keep an eye on my guitar." As if to emphasize his point, Sora scooped the worn Takamine from its resting spot beside him and strummed a few chords.

After subjecting Sora to a moment of searching scrutiny, Kairi shrugged and said, "'Kay. Let's go, Olette." Olette trailed behind her, trying not to look too thankful.

There was a long, thoughtful and decidedly awkward silence around the fire pit. It was finally broken by Axel sniggering and muttering, "Exploded."

"Hey, hey, I've got an idea," said Demyx. His cup, tilted at a violent angle, was slowly but surely introducing its contents to the sand. Demyx took no notice and continued, "We. Should go. To Pirate Cove!" He grinned expectantly at everyone around him.

Sora hunkered down over his guitar. Pirate Cove was a small beach separated from the beach they were on now by a stretch of rocks and a staircase. It had a limited range of uses once the sun had set, the majority of which involved games beginning with "Strip."

"I'm good," said Sora again. Naminé and Pence murmured their agreement with Sora, but Axel looked overjoyed.

"Hear, hear!" Axel cried. Demyx managed to stand up without wobbling too much, after which he attempted to pull Axel to his feet. The absurdly tall redhead knocked Demyx over again, and after a moment of unrestrained laughter, the two best friends set to rubbing sand in each others' hair. Sora sighed.

Eventually, Axel and Demyx remembered their plan and set off to recruit others. Axel shot out a long arm and snagged Zexion as they passed him, but Riku managed to evade capture. He waved at Zexion as they dragged him away.

Resume awkward silence.

Sora, coming to the conclusion that no one else was going to break the silence, did so himself by starting a song on his guitar. He didn't pay much attention to the song he picked; he just didn't want to go on sitting in silence, and he couldn't think of anything to say to anyone. He barely knew Naminé and Riku because both of them had been in Jazz Band only one year, and Pence… well, Pence never had been a big talker.

Sora was a little surprised when Riku sank down next to him on his beach towel. The brunette glanced at him but continued playing for another few measures, then stopped abruptly in the middle of a phrase and held his guitar out towards Riku. "You play?" he asked. He didn't know what made him do it.

It was Riku's turn to look surprised. "Hah, I'm pretty bad," he admitted, "But I try."

Sora shrugged. "If I could play piano, I wouldn't mind being bad at guitar," he said. Even though he hadn't said 'play piano _like you_,' the compliment was still there. He shrugged, a little embarrassed.

Riku eyed the guitar for a moment longer before gingerly taking it from Sora and crossing his long legs Indian style so he could set it in his lap. He leaned over the guitar, shining bangs swinging down to hide his face, and Sora realized with surprise that the silver-haired piano player had pretty lousy posture. Sure, so did everyone, but Sora had never really noticed it with Riku, always subconsciously written off the way the guy slouched just enough to take the edge off his height. Seeing him hunched over a guitar as he tentatively strummed the strings made him seem suddenly very human.

Riku flicked his jade eyes up to look at Sora. "I told you I'm bad," he said, grinning.

Sora blinked. "Oh, no, I didn't—I mean, I was just. Um," he said, thinking quickly, "Just wondering what you were playing."

Riku shrugged, but before he could say anything else, Naminé called across the happily dancing fire to them.

"Play something for us, Sora," she suggested. Pence nodded in encouragement as Riku passed the guitar back to its owner.

"Like what?" Sora asked, flicking his bangs out of his eyes.

"Anything," said Naminé. Sora had expected that. People always said that when he asked what he should play.

So he started into the first song he could think of. It was "Here Comes the Sun," and though Sora always thought it was sort of a cheesy thing to play, it was always the first thing that popped in to his head. When he had finished it, no one said anything. Just sat in companionable silence. So he thought for a moment, retuned his low E string to a D, and started a second song—"Naked as We Came" by Iron & Wine—and had just begun playing the chorus when Kairi trotted up with Olette close behind. The first girl had a bag of marshmallows in her hand.

With the moment gone, Sora ended the song unceremoniously and quirked an eyebrow at his friends. "That was quick."

"We didn't actually buy them," said Kairi. "We saw one of our friends at another bonfire and he gave us their extra bag." She raised the bag and eyed it thoughtfully. "Actually, I'm pretty sure he was hitting on me."

Olette giggled. It was higher pitched than usual.

"Ah, marshmallows," Riku deadpanned. "The ultimate symbol of love."

Sora laughed. Kairi's face twitched uncertainly for a moment as she decided whether or not to be annoyed with this comment, but she ended up smirking slightly and shaking her head. "Yeah, something like that," she muttered. She glanced around the bonfire pit, and finding only empty sand where Axel and Demyx had been earlier, asked, "So where'd those two fools go?"

"Pirate Cove," said Pence.

Kairi looked around at everyone else for confirmation. "You let them go to Pirate Cove?" she asked, incredulous. "I'm surprised Demyx managed to stand up. Should they really be climbing over the rocks?"

"They're in college, they can fend for themselves," Sora reminded her. Well, at least Demyx could. Probably. Sora grinned to himself.

"Sora, seriously," Kairi said. "We should at least check on them and make sure they didn't fall off a cliff or something."

"Then just call him."

"You know Demyx's phone doesn't get reception at the beach," she said with a sigh. Then, as an afterthought, "Or anywhere, really."

"I'll go," offered Riku.

"Aw, it's fine, Riku, we don't really need to—"

"Sora."

"…Fine. Just for you, Kairi."

She looked pleased.

Sora set his guitar to the side and stood up, stretched his arms high above his head with a small noise of satisfaction, and then slipped on his sandals. He ruffled his hair before pointing at Kairi. "But only if you keep an eye on my guitar," he told her. She shrugged and rolled her eyes.

Riku followed him out of the circle of light and onto the dark beach. They didn't speak for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then Sora was about to say something when he remembered that he hardly knew the boy walking next to him. He chewed at his lip thoughtfully. He had never been bothered by talking to strangers before, so why start now? Besides, Riku wasn't even a stranger. They saw each other three mornings a week.

Sora opened his mouth and abruptly closed it again. Well then.

He looked at the sand. He looked at Riku. He looked back at the sand. Usually, conversation came effortlessly to Sora, but when he tried again to say something, the breath caught in his throat and died.

He was about to try a third time when Riku broke the silence for him. "So you and Kairi are friends?" he asked, slipping his hands in to the pockets of his jeans.

"Yeah," said Sora quickly. "We've known each other forever; she's practically my sister."

"Really?" said Riku. For just a moment, something resembling bemused curiosity danced across his face, but he quickly checked himself and shrugged. "That's cool."

"D'you know her?" Sora asked. They had reached the stretch of rocky hill separating the main beach and the cove, and Sora pulled out his cell phone to use as a makeshift flashlight. He knew his way to Pirate Cove like he knew the frets on a guitar, but he wasn't sure Riku did—it was easy enough to pretend he needed the light but actually hold it to light Riku's steps. It was the sort of thing Sora did that made Kairi proud and made Demyx mime puking violently.

"I have Economics with her," Riku said. "She seems nice."

"Kinda controlling," confided Sora with a grin. "It seems… I don't know, Mother Hen-ish to check on Demyx and Axel." He frowned at the rocky ground beneath his feet. "Besides, the last thing I wanna do is sneak up on them in Pirate Cove."

"They can't be doing anything _too_ bad," Riku assured him. "Zexion would have come back. I'm surprised he went with them in the first place."

"I don't think he had much of a choice," Sora said. Poor, poor Zexion.

Riku shrugged noncommittally and set off down the stairs leading to the cove. Sora followed behind him, step, step, step until they reached the bottom and his foot sunk into cool sand. It was too dark to see much of anything happening on the small beach, but someone was laughing at the other end and Sora swore he could make out a blackish blob that may or may not have been his friends.

"Axel?" he called tentatively, trudging through the soft sand. He raised his voice. "Dem?"

The loud laughter trailed off and was followed by a moment of giggling and hushed discussion. A small portion of the blob siphoned off and trotted in their direction. "That you, Sor?" it said in Luxord's dancing accent.

They met halfway down the beach. "Oh, hi Riku," said Luxord before glancing at Sora. "What's up?"

"D'you guys have Demyx and Axel over there?" asked Sora. He rubbed at his arms. He couldn't remember when it had gotten cold.

"Axel, yeah," said Luxord, who knew Axel from the days when the redhead was still at their school and in Jazz Band with them (Axel had played saxophone far better than anyone gave him credit for.) The blonde was smiling a bit too much, and it was hard not to notice that he was currently rather lacking in the shirt department. "Who's Demyx?"

"He was with Axel," Sora explained. "Blonde. Loud."

"Ohhhh," said Luxord, nodding wisely. "I have no idea."

"No idea who he is or no idea where he is?"

"Probably, kind of both."

"Well, we need to find him, so—"

"Wait! I remember," said Luxord, holding up a hand. "He definitely came over with us. I think. Yes. Probably. Wait." He tapped a finger on his short beard. "Yes."

"…So he's fine then?" Sora asked slowly.

"Oh, I dunno, I think he wandered off awhile ago. Why are you asking after him, anyway?"

Sora sighed. "Never mind. We'll just tell Kairi we saw him."

Luxord look at them expectantly, licking his lips. "Er, can I, y'know… go now?"

"Yeah. Thanks," Sora said, and he was vaguely amused by the way the drummer's smile widened just before he bounded off down the beach. Sora watched him fade into an unrecognizable patch of darkness. "Demyx is fine, right?"

"He's fine," Riku reassured him. He added, "Do you always do everything Kairi tells you to?"

Indignant and yet again embarrassed, Sora pouted at his sandals. "No. It was either go find Axel and Dem, or sit and listen to her and Olette giggle like nut house patients on helium. They've been weird lately." When he glanced up from his toes, Riku was watching him with an inscrutable expression. "What?"

Riku shrugged again and turned to walk back toward the steps. Sora followed, wondering if he was the only one who felt like the world was constantly rushing over his head.

One stairway and one rocky path later, the two boys deduced that their bonfire was now in a rather different state than they'd left it in. As they plodded along the sand towards it, avoiding the masses of towels, bags, food and people spread around other fires, they witnessed an explosion of movement and a loud yell, followed by two dark figures departing from the fire's glow. They exchanged a bewildered glance and sped their pace.

The two shadowy people neared them and resolved into one wobbly Roxas and one Hayner staggering under the weight of said Roxas. Sora's twin sported a large, dark stain on his t-shirt and a good amount of what appeared to be Coke creeping down his face.

"What did you do?" was all Sora could think to say, but he immediately regretted it when he saw the miserable look Roxas gave him.

"He's fine," said Hayner gruffly, "But it's probably time for him to go home." He looked meaningfully at Sora.

"Why? What happened?" Sora demanded. Hayner gave him 'just stop asking' eyes as Roxas cursed under his breath.

Sora looked back and forth between the two of them, incredulous. "The bonfire's not over for another hour and a half, and I'd have to drive Demyx home early, too," he said, getting more irritated by the second. _Just great,_ he thought. That was exactly what he needed. College rejections, imminent suffering at the hands of Seifer, and now (on his one night of relaxation) this. Couldn't he get just one break?

"I'll take Demyx home."

Sora looked up at Riku, uncomprehending. "Huh?"

"I don't mind giving Demyx a ride after the beach closes. Does he live around here?" Riku asked.

"Yeah, pretty close," Sora said, still surprised, "But I can't make you do that. Seriously, you—"

"I said I don't mind," Riku reminded him, pushing silver bangs out of his eyes. "Really."

Half of Sora cheered up slightly, and half became inexplicably more frustrated. It left him feeling rather disjointed. "Sure, alright," he mumbled. "Thanks." He shook his head to clear it. "I'll go get my stuff."

Beside the slowly sinking fire, Kairi, Naminé and Pence were all crowded around Olette, who had her head on her knees. Sora didn't ask and neither did they—they just looked at him seriously and nodded in acknowledgment when he waved, then went back to whispering to Olette and patting her on the back.

Sora paused by Riku at the edge of the firelight, shifting the strap of his guitar case on his shoulder. "Hey… thanks."

"Don't mention it," Riku said. His lips twitched to form the ghost of a smile and he tossed his head in Roxas' direction. "Just take care of your brother."

"Yeah," sighed Sora. "See you around, I guess."

Sora said nothing to Roxas as he carried his guitar to the car they shared, and still said nothing as they climbed in. He waited until they were out of the parking lot and back onto the main road before he felt he had grappled with his frustration enough to speak reasonably.

"Want to talk about it?" he asked levelly. They were brothers, after all.

"No," his brother responded quietly, pressing his head against the cool glass of the passenger side window.

Sora squeezed his steering wheel and took a deep breath. "Are you sure?"

Roxas didn't respond. The silence stretched on just long enough that Sora had resigned to being kept in the dark when his brother muttered, "I fucked up… bad." He sighed deeply against the glass. "Said shit I shouldn't have. Did shit I shouldn't have. She'll probably never talk to me again." His voice was small and strained, and it had an edge of that weakness, that willingness to admit defeat that Sora only ever heard when his brother was drunk. "I don't know what I was thinking. She'd never like me…."

"…Olette?"

Roxas tapped his head lightly against the glass but said nothing.

"Hey, don't worry. Just give it time, right? It'll blow over."

Sora could have sworn he heard a whimper. Well, that explained one thing, at least. No wonder Roxas always got moody around Olette—that was pretty much his usual way of dealing with girls he liked.

They drove the rest of the way home in silence. They were both off in their own little worlds: Roxas bemoaning his stupidity and spinning head, and Sora trying to put his finger on why leaving the beach early bothered him so much.

xxXXxx

Again, a super GINORMOUS thanks for everyone who reviewed (and put this on their alerts—but don't be afraid to review! :D ) I luv you guys! Incidentally, I really hate the beach.


	4. Panic Attack

"So are you ready for the concert tomorrow?"

This question was followed by a loud crack as Sora lost hold of the lid of his guitar case. His head snapped up to bring his wide-eyed gaze level with Luxord's.

"For the what?"

oo000OOO000oo

So it was that the next day, Sora found himself sitting in the bleachers of the gym while Beginning Strings squealed painfully through "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," his foot bouncing so violently on the row of seats below him that people were glancing back in irritation almost continuously. He finally reined his right foot in and stepped on it with his left, which just caused them both to shake.

"No worries," said Luxord in a loud whisper, clapping his twitchy friend on the back. Someone shushed him, earning a hissed "Oh, shut up, it's not like it's really music" in response.

Sora swiped at his own bangs. "Yeah. Right. Okay."

But no matter what he told himself, he kept picturing himself standing when it was finally Jazz Band's turn to play and then toppling all the way down the bleachers. Or tripping over one of the many cables crisscrossing the gym floor. Or dropping his guitar, or…. It was ridiculous, really, the number of ways getting to his chair down on the gym floor could go wrong.

The Beginning Strings class screeched to a halt and was greeted with appreciative (and extremely thankful) applause. Toting their instruments, the members of Orchestra trudged out to their seats and prepared to play. It might have seemed an unusual setup for a concert to an outsider—Sora wouldn't know because he'd grown used to it. The school theatre was too small to hold the larger performing groups, and because there were four concerts a year, the Music Department couldn't afford a nice venue for all of them. The fall and spring concerts were held in the gym with seating in the bleachers and the "stage" down on the court. Each performing group had their own section of the floor so no one had to move any instruments until the entire concert was over. The acoustics were terrible and the view of the performers often sucked, but they made it work.

Three more songs until Jazz plays, Sora thought. He whiled away the first rapping his fingertips against his music folder. Two more. He straightened his red tie (the Jazz band "uniform" consisted of a black button-down shirt, black pants, and a tie that was red partially because that was a school color and mostly because it looked badass) until Luxord threatened to strangle him with it. One more. Sora decided he wouldn't be so nervous if he hadn't been reminded only the day before that there was a concert. He had forgotten entirely, and he only ever managed to kill his stage fright when he was sufficiently prepared.

Go time.

Sora made it to his chair and fumbled through getting his guitar on his lap without tripping or dying or breaking things. He glanced around at his fellow band mates, but they were all busy setting up their music stands or tuning their instruments. Except for Riku. The silver-haired boy looked strangely pale, but he glanced over his shoulder to give Sora a reassuring smile nonetheless.

Encouraged, Sora took a deep breath. Just another performance. It would be fine.

It was, of course. Sora slipped into the performing mindset effortlessly, forgetting about the crowd watching him and focusing on the next chord, the next slide of his fingers, the next note. He executed his solo in the second song perfectly and was entirely unaware of the applause that followed.

And just like that, the applause faded and Sora packed his guitar away. Music folder in hand, he followed the rest of the Jazz kids back toward the bleachers, grinning at nothing in particular, and only stopped when he noticed Riku slipping away from the mass of students toward the back door of the gym. The tall boy opened the door silently and snuck out, unnoticed by everyone but Sora.

Sora paused with his bottom foot on the first step of the bleachers as his grin dissolved into a slight frown. That was strange. He had never seen Riku leave before the end of a concert before. Of course, it could just be that he had somewhere to go after the concert and he needed to leave early to get there on time. But who had plans on Wednesday night? Besides, Sora remembered, Riku had looked queasy when he first sat down at his piano bench.

It was settled. Demyx wandering off was one thing, mostly because he was harder to keep track of than a four-year-old on a sugar rush in a mall, but Riku wandering off was too weird to be left alone. Sora turned around (startling Naminé, who had been waiting behind him as he decided whether or not to go to his seat) and set off for the back door. No one saw him slip out.

As the door shut behind him with a small click, Sora peered through the darkness behind the gym. It took him a moment to pick out a dark form with gleaming hair leaning against the nearby football building.

_Or football department?_ Sora wondered. He didn't interact with any of the football guys.

Riku didn't look at him until they were three feet apart, and then he glanced up with a jerk, surprised. Sora grinned sheepishly.

"Sorry," Sora said, rubbing at his neck. "Um. Are you okay?"

"Fine," said Riku stiffly, shoving his hands into his pockets. He had let his hair down and had been worrying at his hair tie when Sora walked up.

Oh. Well. Sora looked down at the ground and felt stupid. He bit at his lower lip, suddenly very conscious of the fact that he only came up to Riku's chin. "Oh. 'Kay."

Riku exhaled loudly before extracting a hand from a pocket to push his bangs out of his face. "Sorry," he said quietly, "It's just crowds, sometimes… they freak me out."

A number of question marks inflated rapidly in Sora's chest. He stared in silence as he tried to wrap his mind around this confession: it was possible for Riku to get freaked out? Riku was scared of _crowds?_ But everyone liked—no, loved—no, worshipped him. He had his own unofficial fan club that included not only girls of every age, but also teachers and probably a number of boys as well. Sora flushed at the thought.

And then, entirely without the prior consent of Sora's mind, Sora's mouth assessed the situation carefully, made a few crafty decisions, and blurt out, "Wanna ditch this and go get burgers or something?"

Mildly shocked, Sora bit at his lower lip to prevent his mouth from plotting anything else.

There was a silent moment in which Sora's train of thought abruptly careened off its previous course and chugged speedily down a track that started something like "WTF stupid he doesn't want to talk to you dumbass" and ended with flying luggage, screaming passengers, and a fiery explosion when Riku said, "Yeah. I'd like that."

"What?" said Sora before he could stop himself, and then (very quickly,) "Okay, awesome, let's go." After a moment of thought, he added, "Roxas has the car tonight. Do, um. Do you mind driving?"

"No problem," Riku responded, running a hand unsteadily through his long hair. The tall boy was usually so composed that Sora felt this awkward, fumbling Riku was something he shouldn't be allowed to see. But Sora said nothing, of course, just nodded and followed Riku toward the back parking lot with his big music folder clutched in one hand, wondering how irritated Luxord would be if he got a text that read, "Hey, could you drag my guitar all the way over to the Band Room and stash it in one of the practice rooms? Kthxbai." On a scale of one to extremely irritated, Sora guessed, Luxord would be extremely irritated.

Abruptly, Sora remembered Riku and his panic attack. Something wriggled in his chest, uncomfortably hot and fuzzy, but he still couldn't think of anything to say.

"Sora?" Riku asked curiously, and the startled brunette extracted his fingers from his newly smoothed bangs and looked up. "I asked how Demyx is."

Still hurtling back down to reality from way up in the clouds, Sora's mind tossed him the one pre-packaged response it could dig up quickly—"He's fine." Splat. His mind returned to Earth. "Yeah, he's great. He goes back to RGU on Saturday, though. He has some frat stuff to do or something." And then, remembering how much Dem hated it when he said 'frat,' he hastily amended, "Fraternity stuff."

Riku took a moment from fumbling with his keys to give Sora an amused look that ended in a small grin. The silver-haired boy shook his head and pressed the button to unlock his car doors (Sora eyeballed it with admiration; he had to unlock his car manually) and then opened his door and slid into the driver's seat.

As he climbed into the passenger seat, Sora took a moment to appreciate the fact that he was actually going to _drive somewhere in Riku's car._ He had heard more people than he could count on both hands whistle and say something about how much they'd like to ride in that car, and here he was, on his way to a burger joint in Riku's car. With Riku. Sure, it was a nice car (perhaps nice should be underlined, capitalized and bolded here) but as Sora reached for the seatbelt, all he could think was that he couldn't remember anyone ever saying that they wanted to drive in Riku's car _with Riku._ That seemed important to him somehow.

Just as Sora was beginning to get the sneaking suspicion that his thoughts had ceased to make sense, Riku asked him, "D'you like James Morrison?"

Sora looked down at the iPod Touch in Riku's hand. He looked up at Riku. He said, "I've never heard him."

Riku arched an eyebrow in mild, joking disapproval before tapping the screen of his iPod and sliding it into a dock that sent what Sora assumed was James Morrison piping through a large number of expensive speakers. They listened in silence as Riku pulled out of the parking lot and set off towards whatever burger joint he had in mind. Both of them felt the awkwardness of the situation, the "alright this is good what next" feeling that often comes with outings with near-strangers.

"_I'm still here, but it hasn't been easy,"_ sang Riku's expensive speakers. Sora drummed along on his thigh with his thumb for a moment before pulling out his cell phone to text Luxord. Then he slid his phone back in to his pocket, straightened one of his rolled-up shirt sleeves, and thought, _Oh, what the heck._

"Does that happen much?" he asked with honest concern. Sora had yet in his seventeen years of life to demonstrate that he was capable of dishonest concern, and Riku must have understood this enough that he didn't feel the need to pretend he didn't understand the question.

Instead, he said, "Not as much anymore." He slowed to a stop at a red light. "It's just been… a weird day." And there was something defensive about the way he said it, but it was a weary, habitual sort of defensive. Sora didn't hold it against him.

Sora thought about Seifer coming back, the quiet feud with Roxas that hadn't died yet, the way that Demyx hadn't talked to him as much over the past few days, and the five rejection letters pinned to the cork board in his room, and he muttered, "Weird few weeks is more like it."

To his surprise, Riku laughed. It was a real laugh, too, all wrapped up with a smile and a sideways glance and everything. Before Sora knew it, he was laughing, too, and then both laughs trailed off into a moment of companionable silence. It was a pointless sort of laugh with little impetus and less direction, but it cheered Sora up all the same. In fact, it gave him all the energy he needed to set him talking about the first thing that popped into his head (which happened to be who James Morrison reminded him of and how he thought the song was pretty cool, but no matter,) and before he knew it, they were in the parking lot beside Kingdom Burgers and he was telling Riku about the time he had set up Luxord's drum set backwards just to see the look on his face when he sat down to play.

When they walked out of the night and into the glaring light of the little fast food place, Sora was still talking animatedly and illustrating his story with his hands as Riku grinned unconsciously. Whatever wall Sora had sensed between them before had vanished, at least for that moment. It didn't even occur to him until after he had sat down with his burger, fries, and shake that he was talking more than he had in weeks.

He stared stupidly at his French fries for ten full seconds before Riku punched him in the shoulder. "You awake, Sora?"

"Hehe, sorry," Sora chuckled. "Has anything I've said over the past few minutes made any sense?" he asked, scratching at the back of his head sheepishly.

Riku pretended to think this over for a moment. "Most of it, yeah."

Sora grabbed a handful of fries, stuffed them in to his mouth, and reached for his strawberry milkshake. Somehow, he managed to mutter "That's more than usual" around his mouthful.

Riku snorted into his burger. He finished chewing, grabbed his Coke and asked, "So do you know where you're going next year?"

Sora took a few seconds longer than he really needed to polish off the fries in his hand. He scratched at his neck and shrugged before saying, as casually as he could manage, "Eh, I don't know yet. You?"

"University of Hollow Bastion," Riku said, then took a sip of Coke.

And it was just like that. He just said it and then drank his soda like it was the most normal thing in the world. Said it like U of HB hadn't been Sora's dream school for the past year, said it like Sora hadn't visited twice already and made up charts in his mind depicting the advantages of going to U of HB over RGU, his other dream school, and vice-versa. He just… said it.

"Oh," Sora managed. "Cool."

If he had looked up, he would have seen the slight contraction of Riku's eyebrows and the slight narrowing of Riku's mouth, and if he had realized that those symbolized concern, Sora might have felt slightly better. He didn't look up, of course. Not even when Riku said, "Do you have any idea about what you might want to do next year?"

"Go to college," Sora muttered darkly, more accidentally than on purpose, and the words came out more bitter than they had felt in his mind.

"That shouldn't be too hard. You've got really good grades, right? And test scores."

"Mm," Sora grunted noncommittally. When he had finished two more bites of his burger and Riku still hadn't said anything else, he added, "All of my schools have rejected me."

"_All_ of them?" Riku said, incredulous, and he kicked himself the second the words slipped out.

"Yeah. Except for Leonhart; they haven't responded yet," Sora responded. He forced the words out as quickly as he could, sinking incrementally deeper into his seat and wishing with all his non-existent telepathic capabilities that Riku would change subjects.

There was a brief silence.

"So where'd you get that guitar, anyway?"

Sora could not possibly have been more thankful for Riku's understanding right then. In fact, he was so busy being thankful that he forgot all about college and was laughing and smiling again by the time Riku had nearly finished all of his fries and the remaining dredges of Sora's milkshake struggled to climb up his straw. His grin lolled happily across his face, glad to be back, all the way up until….

Oh God.

Sora's grin froze in its tracks before melting and sliding slowly off his face. Riku's grin performed much the same feat but was replaced by a look of mild confusion, then (after he had turned to follow Sora's line of vision over his shoulder) an icy, hardened stare.

Sora saw none of Riku's reaction. All he saw was Seifer. And once the icy hot grip of panic had loosened on his heart, all he could manage to whisper in a meek voice was, "Can we leave?"

Riku was already out of his seat, heading toward the trash with his tray in his hands, calling "Let's go" over his shoulder. Sora couldn't move until Riku clapped a big hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the exit.

Whichever school Seifer had been banished to had not treated him kindly. His trademark beanie hid hair now long enough and unkempt enough to nearly obscure the diagonal scar between his eyes. His sallow face shone strangely above the white vest he wore, and the vest combined with black combat boots and tight jeans gave him the look of someone who had aimed for punk and fallen just short of the mark. The thin girl trailing just behind him looked no better and had perhaps gone a bottle of peroxide and an eyeliner pencil too far.

Sora absorbed this all in the moment before he and Riku passed Seifer and his friend. And then time froze. Riku was steering Sora out the door, but Sora's eyes were still locked on Seifer, and Seifer's head was turning, turning, followed by a flicker of recognition in his eyes—

They swept past each other. Sora stumbled into a wall of cool night air.

"Hey Riku!" Seifer called.

Riku's long stride quickened.

Seifer called Riku's name again. By the third time he called it, Riku and Sora were halfway to Riku's car and Sora was nearly running to keep up with the silver-haired boy still clutching his shoulder.

Seifer, apparently, had also started running, because there were three rows of cars left between Sora and his getaway car when Seifer's hand closed around Riku's shoulder and everyone ground to a halt. Seifer's eyes narrowed as he hissed, "Listen to me, damn it!"

"Fuck off," Riku spat, swiping at the other boy's hand.

The blonde had a fist half-raised when he spotted Sora and smirked. "Oh, now this is priceless," he said, clenching his fist tighter. "The loser and the victim I let get away are on a date."

"If you touch him, I'll kill you," Riku responded, and his voice rang deep and strong in the quiet parking lot.

After a brief silence, Seifer either took this as a challenge or decided that harming Sora was worth dying for. He reached past the tall boy in front of him and caught Sora's upper arm roughly… after which he was thrown to the asphalt.

The ensuing fight didn't last long enough for Sora to ever figure out exactly what was happening. It reminded him of those cartoon fights where the actual violence is all hidden in a blur and only hands and feet popping out in odd places indicate that anyone is actually fighting. It wasn't at all like that, of course, because Sora saw Seifer's hands claw through long silver hair and heard the sound of Riku's fists hitting flesh. But it almost seemed fake like that. Surreal.

And just like that Seifer walked away, yanking at his vest and pretending he had better things to do. Riku watched him leave, chest heaving, nails digging grooves into his palms. Sora stared wide-eyed.

Eventually, Riku's rapid gasps evened out, and he unsteadily said, "Let's go."

Sora didn't question him. He moved like a clumsy robot following orders and couldn't remember later how he climbed into Riku's car without hurting himself, but he managed it somehow and stared out the window until Riku asked, "Where do you live?"

Sora mumbled his address.

Riku nodded. The air in the car contracted around Sora, thickening and threatening to strangle him until Riku asked, "You know him?"

"Yeah," Sora exhaled. "He tried to drown me once."

Everyone encounters statements during their life that it's impossible to prepare for. For Riku, this was one of them. He couldn't find words to respond because he couldn't even find an emotion to latch on to. He just stared determinedly at the road until he felt he could say "Oh" at a normal volume.

Sora, remembering suddenly, said, "You know him too though."

"Yeah," Riku responded, and left it at that.

Nothing else was said during the car ride to Sora's house. Sora stared blankly at the trees rushing by and thought about how he had never been scared of a fight until the day Seifer tried to drown him, and how he could defend himself in any situation not involving Seifer. If that beanie-wearing blonde had intended to scar Sora for life, he had succeeded marvelously.

The car pulled up in front of Sora's brown two-story house. Riku put it in park and Sora fumbled with his seatbelt before remembering his manners and saying, "Thanks." Riku grunted in response.

Swinging his legs out of the car, Sora felt a hand press his shoulder. He turned back to look at Riku, but Riku had focused his gaze somewhere at the end of the street. Sora watched him expectantly, becoming more and more acutely aware of the weight of a hand on his shoulder as seconds ticked past.

Riku's hand fell from Sora's shoulder and rose again to brush back Riku's bangs. "Hey, just… just promise me you'll stay away from him, alright?"

Heat coursed through Sora's cheeks. He turned away, ruffled his hair, and said, "Yeah, yeah, of course. It's not like I'd want to do that again."

And he climbed out of the car feeling like an idiot. _He_ wouldn't want to do it again? Riku was the one who would have bruises to show for their encounter. He had defended Sora while Sora stood and watched. Why Riku had done that at all, Sora couldn't say.

"He probably just really hates Seifer," Sora mumbled at his reflection in the mirror, holding a half-empty tube of toothpaste in one hand. He stared his reflection down, feeling inexplicably like one solitary butterfly had taken up residence in his stomach.

xxXXxx

Bah, sorry that took so long. I graduated from high school yesterday, so I should have more time to write from here on out. Hope you enjoyed this section. I dunno how satisfied I am with it, but I promise the next one will be more fun rather than all serious. :)


	5. Party Like a Rock Star

Again, sorry to make you all wait! This chapter simply refused to be written. I had 8 pages written of one version of it before I scrapped it and started over, and the rest of it was revision after revision after revision… and now I think my eyes will start bleeding if I look at it anymore. So here you go. Enjoy. :)

EDIT (same day): Hopefully changed things so they make a little more sense. Yep, I think my eyes are bleeding.

xxXXxx

"D'you ever think everything's different than it's supposed to be?" Sora asked.

In the ensuing silence (if it could be called silence given the roar of music issuing from the house behind him,) the brunette dug at his knees with his chin, and when that failed to amuse him, stretched a hand out before him with all of the fingers spread so that it became possible to trace the outlines of his tendons with his gaze. In the V's that his fingers made sparkled sections of the city that studded the dark blanket of land stretched out below him. The expanse of city lights was half-heartedly mirrored by a star-peppered sky, and Sora envisioned the city sneering at the few pitiful stars persistent enough to claw their way through the atmosphere just to be outmatched and outnumbered by their man-made counterparts.

There was a message in that somewhere, Sora reflected. And then he got distracted by the realization that he could hold out his thumb and forefinger, close one eye, and pretend to squish all of the glittering expensive houses way down below.

"Dude. Lay off the punch," Demyx advised, and in the same way he always strived to set a good example for the children, he took a swig of the mysterious red substance in his cup.

The sigh that crawled out of Sora's mouth then was decidedly exasperated, and perhaps, if someone not as clearly advanced along the path to liver-destruction as Demyx currently was had heard it, it could have even been described as disappointed.

"No, I mean… it's like…" Sora attempted hopelessly. His hand dropped down to his side and (sighing again) he swung his legs down so that they hung on the inner side of the balcony railing and he could kick his heels against the many little columns supporting him. He screwed up his face in concentration, furthering Demyx's current mental image of Sora as an overgrown child, and he continued, "It's like those alternate universes that people talk about. You know, for every choice you make, there's another universe in which you actually made the other choice, just millions and millions of universes like that." Sora's heels thumped ineffectually at the stone. "Sometimes I feel like I'm in the wrong one."

Demyx regarded him blankly before saying, in a slightly exaggerated version of the tone actors in medical shows use when talking about malignant tumors, "That sounds serious."

He dodged Sora's hand a heartbeat later, and when Sora's attempted shove met unfortunately insubstantial air where it should have met Demyx's substantial (if thin) shoulder, Sora lost his balance and toppled forward off of his perch.

Demyx smirked down at his opponent. "Devilishly Handsome Demyx: one. Pipsqueak: zero."

Nursing injuries that probably amounted to little more than a scraped elbow and the beginnings of a healthy bruise on his hip, 'Pipsqueak' clambered into a sitting position and aimed a pout upwards.

Demyx's grin faltered. Although a seasoned master of pouts and puppy-eyes himself, the blonde had never once won against Sora's wobbly baby blues and sad little mouth. The older boy shifted uncomfortably against the railing behind him. "C'mon, So, you're fine." No change. Demyx leaned further back against the railing, crossed his ankles, and ran a hand through his spiky mullet/Mohawk fusion, glancing guiltily to one side. "Look, Sora, if this is about Leonhart… it's a good school, 'kay?"

Sora's trademark pout dissipated, leaving him suddenly aware that he was sitting on the floor and staring dumbly up at his friend. Neither of them moved. Eventually, Sora's shoulders slumped and he mumbled, "Yeah, I guess so" without much sincerity.

Demyx leaned forward and ruffled his friend's hair. "Go inside and talk to some people, huh? It's a party. Have fun." Straightening, he added, "And the punch isn't off-limits, you know."

Sora rolled his eyes, then watched his friend sidle through one of the doors back into the house before starting up a conversation with someone he knew. The two of them eventually wandered away from the door, and Sora watched them until they disappeared down a hallway. Sora thought it led to the kitchen, but he couldn't really remember. In fact, now that he thought of it, he wasn't entirely sure whose balcony had just eaten a portion of his elbow-skin. Axel hadn't bothered to give Sora and Demyx a name when he'd told them about the party.

Now alone with a lukewarm breeze and a few persistent stars, Sora took a moment to reflect upon how strangely his Friday had gone.

At the beginning of Jazz band, Sora had checked through the practice rooms until he found his beautiful, beautiful Ibanez all snug in its case. Silently thanking Luxord, he grabbed the case's handle, flicked off the small room's light, and was halted abruptly by and intimate view of Riku's clavicles. He stumbled back, startled, but the tall boy said nothing: just handed him his music folder, rubbed at his neck with a bare hand, turned around, and walked off towards his piano. There was a light bruise on his left arm and his knuckles looked raw.

Sora looked down at the folder in his hand as a number of his organs twisted uncomfortably. He must have left it in Riku's car the night before.

At lunch, Sora saw Seifer smoking a cigarette out front of the little pizza place that students old enough to go off-campus during lunch frequented. Roxas, jaw clenched and face set in a suppressed grimace, suggested they get food somewhere else, while Sora stared intently at the pavement. They settled on a nearby grocery store where Sora got a sandwich and a Red Bull that he finished in his Art History class. He didn't absorb a word of the lecture, but toyed with the can until Kairi asked him if he was okay. He had to think seriously before answering. "Guess so."

And then, of course, what happened after school.

Sora was lying on his back on his bed, counting the plastic stars stuck to his ceiling. Axel was supposed to come with Demyx in a little while to pick him up, and although the three of them didn't hang out together much, Sora had agreed because it was Demyx's last night in town.

_Three, four, five,_ Sora counted.

"Sora?" his mom called up the stairs.

_Six, seven,_ Sora counted. "Yeah Mom?"

His mom called back, "You've got a letter here from Leonhart."

_Eight, what?_

He lay very still for a minute. Vivi looked up at him, tail wagging erratically, watching him breathe deeply through his nose until he got up the courage to push himself up off his bed. He trotted downstairs with Vivi hot on his heels and stopped at the bottom of the steps where his mother stood with a stack of letters in hand. She produced an envelope with a Leonhart return address.

It was a big envelope.

"Ffffffluh," went Sora as he slumped down on the bottom step, face in his hands.

Blue eyes moist, his mom squeezed his shoulder. "Congratulations, So," she said. Vivi scrambled onto his lap and tired to lick his nose between his fingers.

Being congratulated felt wrong somehow, like he'd cheated on a math test and gotten an A+ for it. Leonhart was his safety school. No, Leonhart was _less _than his safety school. It was just a word he'd jotted down on a list a few months back, a list that had colleges numbered one through five on it and a blank spot next to the six at the bottom. Leonhart wasn't _anything_.

_But they're the only ones that want me,_ he thought, and couldn't think of anything else that had stung that much in his entire life.

Everything past that was indistinct and unimportant. Somewhere along the way, Axel had suggested a party, and though Sora couldn't actually remember doing it, he must have agreed.

So the day went, dragging Sora all the way to a balcony at someone or other's house where he sat on the floor, ruefully rubbing his arm.

He pushed himself to his feet and spared a moment's consideration for the long, deserted balcony stretching out to both sides before pulling open one of the doors and entering a world of loud conversation, louder music, and the permeating scent of beer.

Sora amused himself by beginning a drawn-out expedition in search of Axel. He wasn't wholly sure what he would do when he found the redhead, but his teenaged brain informed him that anything was better than standing around all alone at a party. He walked through three different crowded and tastefully decorated rooms without seeing a single face he recognized before he heard someone call his name.

He turned toward the source of the sound and glanced around self-consciously, the same way people always do when they're not entirely sure whether or not someone just called their name, and they don't want to turn around and look stupid if no one really _did_, but they don't want to take the chance that they'll be ignoring someone if they _don't_ look….

He heard his name again, this time in conjunction with a moving mouth. Was that…? No, it couldn't be—

"Tidus?" Sora said incredulously.

Grinning widely, the muscled blonde gave Sora a fist bump and a one-armed hug. "No way, man, what have you been up to for the past four years?" Tidus asked, voice dancing up and down in disbelief. Before Sora could draw in a breath to answer, Tidus drew him into the circle of people he'd been talking to a moment before. "This is Sora," he said, punching his old friend in the arm. "We were friends in elementary and middle school. He's a fuckin' genius. Hey, Sora, you still play guitar?"

Finding a large number of eyes suddenly focused in his direction, Sora cleared his throat. "Yeah, I play in Jazz Band at school." _Crap, is that geeky?_ he thought hastily.

"That's really cool," one of the girls in the circle said. Her smile made Sora uncomfortable.

"Hey, Sora, do you know where you're going to school?" Tidus asked, genuinely interested. As an aside to his friends, he said, "We always joked that Sora would go somewhere amazing and change the world. He's too fuckin' smart."

Sora felt his cheeks begin to blaze like someone had lit a furnace behind his face, and now _two_ of the girls in the circle were smiling a little too widely at him. "Uh, actually… I don't know yet," he said, and left it at that.

Tidus shrugged, clearly disappointed that his childhood friend didn't have as much to add to the conversation as he'd hoped. His circle of friends, however, was still staring Sora down, and just when one of the girls was beginning to open her mouth to say something, Sora blurted, "Hey, I have to go find my friend."

The tension subsided and Tidus clapped Sora on the back. "Alright. Nice talking to you, man," the blonde said.

"Yeah, see you around," Sora said, slipping out of the circle as quickly as he could manage without being rude. He caught one of the girls flashing the other a disappointed glance just before he turned around and maneuvered his way through another crowd of people. He set back to exploring the different sections of the party with relish.

Eventually, despite his best efforts to stay comfortably lost, Sora stumbled upon Axel laughing like a maniac in a somewhat secluded room. The people circling the table he sat at were all clutching cards and in various states of undress (read: either two or fewer articles of clothing away from being entirely naked, or already wearing a lampshade.)

Before Sora could even think 'Strip Poker' and duck back out the door, Axel spotted him.

"Hey hey, Sora!" he called, grinning widely. He had on jeans and a tie over a bare chest, suggesting that his poker skills considerably outranked those of his fellow players. Sora found himself fleetingly reflecting that Axel hadn't been wearing a tie when they first arrived. "Come play with us!"

"I'm good, thanks," Sora assured him hastily.

Axel pulled a face and stretched out his long legs. He shrugged his bony shoulders, saying, "Alright, alright. But where the hell's Demy? You've gotta get him in here."

Sora mumbled something akin to "sure" before bolting out of the room and trotting back down the hallway he had just walked through. He had no real plans to find Demyx, but he _did_ plan on avoiding that back room like the plague for the rest of the night.

As he sidled past two people making out against what looked like an expensive painting, Sora found himself thinking exasperatedly, _Is this what it _really _means to be a teenager?_ He never could see the point in drinking, but Demyx said that was because he was already high on life.

And he was, generally. Sora loved everything. Sora loved sand and people and biking and crayons and beetles and breathing and even, on occasion, parties. Very, very few things had the distinction of falling under the category of things Sora actually disliked, and almost everything in that category was easily justified—headaches, for example. Or Seifer. But lately… lately—

THUD went an anonymous chin against his forehead. A large amount of cold and wet introduced itself with surprising speed to Sora's left pant leg. The owner of the anonymous chin and now-empty beer cup exploded in high-pitched chuckles and stumbled past, leaning heavily on someone who called out an apology over his shoulder.

Sora stared down at his pants in disbelief. His half-open mouth formed the word "Seriously" before he decided he'd had just about enough and set off for somewhere quiet where he could call his brother and beg him to come pick him up. He wished suddenly (and bitterly) that he had driven himself instead of hitching a ride with Axel, then choked back frantic laughter when he realized the brilliance of asking _Axel _for a ride to a _party_ in the first place.

Well, Sora was through with the party. He'd had enough of drunkards, bad music and beer on his jeans for one night, and he couldn't even find one freaking place where it was quiet enough to use his cell phone. How big could the house possibly be? And _where_ had the front door gone?

Finally, Sora spotted a familiar door opening onto a familiar balcony. Thanking whatever benign and merciful god had led him back to the only place in which he had a chance at being heard over a phone, Sora kept his eyes trained on his goal and weaved through a shifting mass of people.

He burst outside and inhaled deeply, then let out a similarly deep sigh. A few stars twinkled weakly at him—_Welcome back! _ With some annoyance, he noted that the balcony was no longer deserted—two people were twined tightly around each other in the darkness—but they were probably too drunk or too distracted to be bothered by him anyway. He set to fishing his phone out of his pocket, thankful that the stretch of wet inhabiting his pant leg ended safely below the end of said pocket. His phone would live to see another day.

The little lump of plastic, metal, and SIM card salvation had nearly wriggled all the way out of his pocket when something possessed him to look back up.

The darkness wasn't deep enough to obscure his vision completely. His rapidly adjusting eyes attributed Demyx's skinny frame and distinct haircut to one of the figures. And as for the other one? The one pressed against the wall and kissing Demyx insistently, the one whose hair had Demyx's fingers twined deeply in it?

That was definitely Zexion.

Sora choked on nothing, choked on air. He must have choked more loudly than he thought, because Demyx straightened slightly and his half-closed eyes swiveled in Sora's direction before widening. He still had his fingers tangled in the other boy's hair.

They stood like that, staring with wide eyes, while Demyx's labored breaths stirred little eddies in Zexion's hair and Sora's joints all turned to stone. They just stood and stared, and all Sora could think over and over was _He's not even that drunk. He's not even that drunk, _and all Sora could feel was betrayed. Demyx had betrayed him somehow, and if that didn't really make sense, he didn't give a damn.

Blindly, Sora staggered back into the house just as his friend swore emphatically behind him. Sora plunged through the crowd. He came a hair's breadth from jostling a delicate, twisting table lamp that screamed expensive and then he got stepped on by some girl possibly as dazed as he was (though for very different reasons,) and he would have continued all the way through the house like a rather small drunken rhino had a large hand not closed around his upper arm and turned him forcibly around.

The hand belonged to Riku, who was peering confusedly at him from behind his shining bangs.

"Sora? Are you okay?" he asked over the obscenely loud music, brow furrowed. His grip on Sora's arm tightened.

Sora's eyes roved over Riku's face desperately. His lips parted and his mouth hung open so that he stared at Riku stupidly, mutely, wondering, _What can I possibly say?_ _'I just saw my best friend and your best friend making out on the balcony, and oh yeah—they're both MEN'?_ Even in his head, the words refused to line up right. There was no way he'd ever get them out of his mouth.

A moment will be spared here to note that Riku had spent as much of his life as he could remember being called a number of phrases which all boiled down to "heartless bastard." While these were usually said with a certain amount of humor, Riku had eventually begun to worry that humor often concealed the truth and he might really be a heartless bastard after all. Though it may seem a little odd to bring this up while Riku's got a hand clamped around Sora's upper arm and Sora is staring at him speechlessly and sporting a large beer stain on his pants, it serves to explain the deeply relieved and just slightly self-satisfied look that spreads across Riku's face when he realizes that the twinge he's just felt deep in his gut means he genuinely gives a damn about this kid.

However, entirely without the benefit of a back-story, Sora only saw Riku sigh deeply and slide his grip down to the smaller boy's wrist. He turned and pulled Sora along behind him, and Sora found himself unable to do anything but obey.

Drowning silently in his thoughts, he watched Riku's long silver hair sway in front of him as the tall boy led him up a crowded staircase and along a hall. Every step they took drew them closer to the fringes of the party where the music wasn't so loud, the rooms weren't as brightly lit, and the people… well, Sora decided not to think too hard about the people.

A minute later, Sora realized with a start that they were on the roof of the house. He glanced back at the window the two of them had just climbed out of, then over at Riku with an eyebrow raised.

"I've been here a few times," Riku said, shrugging. He sat down and leaned comfortably against the wall, stretching one leg out along the gentle slant of the roof and bending the other so that he could rest an arm on it. "Used to party a lot."

Sora sunk down beside him. First, he wanted to ask why they were on a roof. Second, he wanted to ask if Riku knew about Zexion. Third, and this was mostly because he had spent the entire journey behind Riku contemplating the boy's unfettered hair—third, he wanted to give into the irritating urge to find out if Riku's hair felt as soft as it looked.

So obviously, the first thing that came out of his mouth was "I thought you were afraid of crowds."

He blinked. _Huh?_ went his poor little overworked brain.

Riku's head tilted back until it was resting against the wall behind him. He shrugged again, this time only bothering to use one shoulder. "Like I said, only sometimes," he said. Sora thought he recognized just a hint of the defensiveness from last time they'd discussed Riku's fear. "Parties… parties are different. They're familiar."

Sora pulled his knees up under his chin and stared at his shoes intently, as if they might change shape at any moment and reveal the answers to all of the questions flying in uneven circles around his mind. He tried to snag one of the questions, capture it and hold it fluttering in his fingers like a bird in a cage, but they all flitted away the moment he drew near.

Eventually, Riku said, "So… are you okay? You've been staring at your shoes for two minutes now. I'd be a little uncomfortable if I were them."

A little embarrassed chuckle slipped out of Sora's lips. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just answer my question," Riku said. His expression had a smile hidden behind it.

Sora covered his face in his hands and made a small noise of frustration. Voice muffled by his fingers, he murmured, "I didn't know you were going to be here." His head rose an inch so he could glance sideways at Riku. "You and Zexion, I mean."

"Demyx sent him a text," Riku replied. When Sora's mouth went slack, Riku's eyebrows knit together. "Demyx didn't tell you?" he asked.

Sora could have easily understood that statement as "Demyx didn't tell you he invited us?" if it hadn't been followed by a sudden clearing of the throat and an abrupt glance away. However, under the circumstances, Riku suddenly became as suspicious as a cat with a feather in its teeth.

"Demyx didn't tell me… what?" Sora asked slowly.

"About the text," Riku tried. But it was too late.

"No, no, Demyx didn't tell me _what?_" Sora asked more insistently. At that moment, a number of the questions in his head collided, engaged in activities of questionable propriety, and in a feathery explosion produced a newborn answer, which was naked and wailed and flopped around right under Sora's nose until he absolutely _had_ to acknowledge it.

And with great reluctance, Sora said, "…Oh." And with even greater reluctance, Sora continued, "You mean about him and Zexion…?"

"Yeah," Riku said uncomfortably. "They've been hanging out since the bonfire. They're pretty much dating."

"Oh," Sora said, expressionless. "I saw them on the balcony." His insides all contracted at once, leaving him feeling empty. He didn't even flounder in the denial stage. His mind swam right on to the confused, bewildered, and slightly hurt stage, because in one great flash of understanding he remembered Kairi's jokes at the movie theater and Demyx going missing at the bonfire and the way he'd subconsciously noticed that his best friend had been grinning a lot more than was usual for the past week (the few times they'd actually seen each other.)

Despite the way it made his stomach knot, it all made sense.

"Dem… likes _guys?_" he whispered.

Riku rapped a quick pattern against his knee with a thumb. After inhaling slowly, he acknowledged, "That probably wasn't the best way for you to find out, huh?"

Suddenly rendered unable to think, Sora could only state the obvious. "But… he never told me," he said slowly.

Riku turned a palm to the sky in a what-can-you-do kind of gesture before saying, "Zex didn't tell me for years. I was surprised, but it's not that big of a deal." He suddenly shot Sora a serious look. "Does it bother you?"

Sora blushed violently and scratched at the back of his head. "Well, I mean—no, it's just—it's—"

Whatever it was just would remain a mystery to Riku, for at that moment, the house fell eerily silent. Then, from somewhere down below, a voice shouted, "Cops will be here in a few minutes! Everyone out!"

For one instant so short that it was better measured in emotion than in time, Sora and Riku exchanged a blank stare.

Then Riku said "Let's go," and the two of them scrambled back through the window with all of the speed their young bodies would allow them.

While they retraced their steps down the hallway and stairs at hyper speed, both dismally aware of the fact that everyone else was way ahead of them, Sora's inner monologue ran something along the lines of _Oh god I've never gotten in trouble for something like this before, Mom will KILL me, what do they do to you if you didn't actually drink? But I was still around a bunch of minors who were drinking and I'm probably guilty by association or something and CRAP I'VE GOT BEER ON MY PANTS_ and trailed off into the contracting and releasing of his muscles and the irregular heaving of his chest.

Riku's inner monologue started and ended with _Great, not again._

They tore through the open front door and into the warm night, figuring that the cops were still a few minutes away and they could just sneak out and pretend they'd never been there at all, and they'd be able to avoid all of the awkward questions and inconvenient parental contact….

So of course they ran directly into the line of vision of two cops already in pursuit of fleeing party-goers.

Riku, taking into consideration that the policemen had just seen two shady figures burst out of the front door of a house that had recently held a whole lot of minors consuming a whole lot of alcohol, and also considering that he could really use a chance to stretch his legs, gave Sora a look that said _Why stop now?_ and bolted across the front lawn with Sora at his heels.

Riku wasn't worried. Around Sora, there was no such thing as Worrying. There was Being Confident and nothing else.

Sora was so worried he couldn't think straight, but it didn't matter because Riku was Being Confident a few feet ahead of him and everything would work out somehow.

Riku sprinted down a path between the party house and one of its neighbors. If he remembered correctly, it led to a little park from which he could access a path that wound down the hillside into a completely different section of the neighborhood. The path was hidden because it wasn't actually connected to the park; it just ran by it, separated by a row of bushes. Riku had been told about it at the last party he'd gone to at the house they'd just escaped.

Somehow, Sora managed to keep up with Riku. He could see a bunch of kids alongside them now, shadowy figures with churning legs, but he tried to focus on Riku's back. They were almost at the park, then they shot through a line of trees and they _were_ at the park and Sora was still focusing on Riku's hair, right up until the toe of his shoe caught in an invisible dip in the grass and everything suddenly stopped being okay.

His ankle did a funny little dance before giving out beneath him, and his momentum sent him sliding across the slick grass to the foot of a park bench. Riku skidded to a halt in front of him and whirled around.

The tall boy's mind worked at lightning speed. They still had a few seconds—the cops weren't running after Sora and Riku specifically, but their current path would lead them right past the two boys—there was nowhere to hide, but if he could make it look like they'd been there all along, like they _weren't_ the ones the cops were after—

He lunged forward and grabbed the front of Sora's shirt. In one giant heave, he lifted Sora onto the park bench and pushed him back against it.

"Trust me?" he hissed.

"Ye—" Sora began. The end of the word turned into a startled squeak when Riku's mouth pressed against his. In an instant, Riku had a knee up on the bench and his other leg between Sora's knees so that he was leaning over the smaller boy, forcing him back against the bench, and then Riku's hand went up Sora's shirt to graze against his stomach and Sora was gone, gone, gone.

In the same way it had abruptly started, it was suddenly over. Sora resurfaced, breathless, to find two slack-faced, wide-eyed cops staring in disbelief at him and the tall boy hunched over him.

The three seconds that followed held the special distinction of being the longest three seconds that Sora had ever experienced in his entire life.

Then the two cops were off like a shot out of a cannon, and Sora, flushed and breathing heavily, became very aware of the fact that Riku still crouched over him like a lion with its prey. That, and that Riku had just kissed him.

"Wha—" he began, but again he was cut off: this time by the press of Riku's fingers. A few more seconds rolled past, during which the two retreating cops became indistinct blotches chasing after even more indistinct blotches. Then Riku removed his fingers, rolled off of Sora to land next to him on the bench, and let out one huge breath.

"What the hell?" Sora spat out.

He was stunned by Riku's look of astonishment. "Sorry," Riku said breathlessly. "It was the only thing I could think of."

They looked at each other, both with flushed cheeks, heaving chests, and slightly open mouths.

Without even knowing why, Sora laughed first: it was just a small snorting giggle, really, but once he'd done it, there was no stopping. Riku laughed, too, and soon the both of them were rocking with uncontrollable laughter, nearly choking on their already ragged breaths.

By the time their peals of laughter had faded to incredulous smiles, both of them were clutching their poor tortured stomachs and wiping at damp eyes. Sora shook his head, still chuckling as he palmed his eyes.

"After the whole Demyx thing," he said, grinning unconsciously, "That was…." He began to laugh again, almost silently.

Riku let his head fall back against the park bench. His grin was nearly as wide as Sora's as he said, "That was so _stupid._" His head lolled to the side slightly so that he could see Sora out of the corner of his eye. "Why did we do that?"

In response, Sora just continued laughing up until Riku helped him up from the bench and slung Sora's arm over his shoulder to support him. It was difficult considering their height difference, but they made it to Riku's car (which, thankfully, was parked a street over from the party) and got Sora lowered into the passenger seat.

It didn't even register in Sora's mind that he was lucky enough to be a passenger in Riku's car yet again. He was in a daze, and it seemed the less he thought about anything, the better.

After helping him up the front steps to his house, Riku bumped Sora lightly on the top of his head with a fist. "Try to keep out of trouble, alright?" he said quietly, still smiling. "And hey, talk to Demyx."

Sora's daze faded slightly when he replied, "I will," and slightly more when he realized he didn't mean it. He waved at Riku as the boy turned around toward his car, then remembered something from what seemed like the ancient past. He called out, "Hey, I got into Leonheart!"

Riku turned to smile at him, keys in hand. "Congratulations."

Sora shrugged. "Thanks. G'night!"

"See you, Sora," Riku said, and climbed into his car.

oo000OOO000oo

Saturday morning. Sora lay in bed with his face in his pillow, aware of a soft throbbing in his ankle. White curtains only partially dulled the light fighting to climb through his window.

He exerted a moment's effort to raise his head far enough to read his alarm clock. Demyx wouldn't leave for the airport for another three hours. There was still time.

Allowing his head to fall back to the comfort of his pillow, Sora reflected on the previous night. What Riku had done… well, that had certainly been confusing. Though at the same time, it seemed like it should have made his problem with Demyx _less_ confusing somehow. Like it wasn't such a big problem after all.

He recalled the expression on his best friend's face when he'd caught them on the balcony. He wondered what Demyx's expression was now, and what it would be when he filed onto the plane back to RGU. Maybe he'd look back over his shoulder like people did so often in cheesy movies. Maybe he'd just look straight ahead and soldier on.

Sora sighed. After he'd inhaled as much of his pillow as he could stand, he rolled over and went back to sleep.


	6. Spring Break: Part 1

Thanks to Perceptions for being my beta (and an overall awesome friend!) :) The long delay between this chapter and the last can be blamed on a combination of writer's block and taking FOUR literature classes. (I've read at least fifteen books since classes started.) Anyway, this is part one of Spring Break. I was going to post all of it as one chapter, but I wanted to give you guys something to keep you going. :) And just so you know, I have no plans to quit on this fic—don't be discouraged by long breaks between chapters! Enjoy, and please review!

xxXXxx

There were only three, as far as Sora could tell. Shaking out a sweatshirt in an attempt to dislodge a pair of boxers that had latched on to it, he considered that three was a very small number. Well, sure, maybe not if you were thinking about heart attacks or marathons or full-grown bull elephants. But if you were thinking about, say… ants, or maybe minutes to live, then yes—three was a very small number.

Sora was thinking about options. Thinking about options so monopolized his brain power, in fact, that the tenacious pair of boxers won out over his half-aware fingers and ended up folded snugly into the sweatshirt, which would be dragged out of a drawer some days later and cause some consternation to one Roxas when it revealed its surprise filling.

He had figured that his options were as follows. One: suck up his pride and go to Leonhart, which was probably worth more than he gave it credit for. Two: pin the Leonhart acceptance letter up on his corkboard with his five rejections letters where he felt it belonged, then fill out an application for DIC and brace himself for the terrors of community college with Axel in the hopes that RGU would like him better in a year or two. Three: retreat to his closet with a Dr. Pepper and a bag of those chocolate-dipped pretzels and refuse to emerge until everything started to make sense again.

And that third one? Tasty, perhaps, but not all that much of an option.

The brunette morosely stacked a sock on top of its matching partner. It was two options, then. A pair. "Like socks," he mumbled, reaching for another sock to find a partner for.

"…What?" said Roxas. He had been thinking about Spring Break and was so engrossed in making plans that he had spent the last half a minute scowling at a pair of jeans. When Sora looked at him blankly, he gave the jeans a half-hearted shake and began folding them.

"College," said Sora absentmindedly. He had made a separate pile for socks that he planned to sort out after they folded the rest of the clothes heaped before them.

"College… is like socks?" Roxas said slowly, a lacy shirt dangling from his hand.

Sora frowned. "No, I meant…." But he couldn't remember what he meant, so he threw another sock onto the pile and shrugged.

Roxas made a noise of distaste and attempted to fold the shirt he held, muttering, "You're acting so weird lately." He gave Sora a sideways look. "You're still not going to tell me what happened at that party, are you?"

"Nothing happened," Sora lied automatically, his insides squirming uncomfortably. He pointedly avoided his twin's gaze and focused on pairing up all of the socks in his pile. Grab, search, stack, again and again until he sat with one white sock in his hand. Only one.

One was a very small number indeed.

oo000OOO000oo

Sora liked every day of the week but one. The only day that Sora didn't hold in high esteem was not close enough to the preceding weekend for him to still feel rested, too far from the next weekend to bring much hope, and utterly devoid of Jazz Band.

TUESDAY, pronounced his planner in large rounded letters. He supposed they printed it that way to make the poor day feel better. It might be a crappy day, but at least it was printed in a festive font.

Sora sat through all of his classes that Tuesday through sheer force of will. When he mentioned his restlessness to Kairi, she just said, "It's Senioritis. I know exactly what you mean," and continued to doodle on Hayner's arm. It didn't feel like Senioritis. It felt like… well, it felt like—

"Hurry up, Sora," Roxas snapped. He shifted the strap of his backpack and glared back at his twin, who was standing some ten feet behind him in the Senior Parking Lot.

"You're so needy, Roxas. 'Drive the car, Sora.' 'Hurry up, Sora.'"

"I'm seriously about to hit you."

Sora stuck out his tongue and a few seniors walking out to their cars gave him quizzical glances. He didn't want to tell Roxas that he was walking slowly because his ankle was still sore; the last thing he needed was to give his brother another reason to ask him about the party.

"Hey, Sora," said a voice from behind.

Hastily pulling his tongue back into his mouth, Sora jerked his head around toward the voice. His head took the upper half of his body with it, nearly resulting in an embarrassing (though hardly unusual) Sora-tripping-and-eating-it situation, but by some stroke of luck, Sora's feet and legs caught up with the rest of his body in time and he remained standing.

Bewildered that the soles of his shoes were still firmly on the ground, Sora spluttered, "Hi Riku."

The piano player tossed a binder into the trunk of his car before closing it. Roxas offered him a small, noncommittal wave before continuing on to his car, which was parked further down the row that Riku's was in, but Sora slowed to a halt behind Riku's car. He felt like something needed to be settled between them.

"How's it going?" Sora asked, smiling awkwardly.

"Better now that school's over," Riku replied, shutting his trunk.

"Definitely," said Sora, grinning. He raised a hand to scratch at the back of his neck, feeling very distinctly that there was an elephant labeled "The Thing That Happened At That Party" sitting very nearby. He wanted to kick it.

Riku leaned back against his car and hooked his thumbs in his pockets before asking, "How's your ankle doing?"

Sora's stomach was midway through a somersault when someone nearby scoffed, "Well isn't this romantic." The two boys glanced up in tandem. Riku cursed under his breath.

It was Seifer. _Of course,_ thought Sora as all of his muscles went rigid. _This is just great._

Seifer halted just out of Riku's reach, his entire being oozing with the heavy smell of cigarette smoke. He looked Riku up and down as one arched eyebrow nearly disappeared up under his beanie.

Without a word, Riku took a half step forward, placing himself just an inch closer to the grungy blonde than Sora was.

Seifer's expression darkened. He waved down a pale-haired girl standing elsewhere in the parking lot and headed in her direction, but paused before he had walked very far. "You planning on keeping him on a leash, Riku?" he sneered over his shoulder. "Because if not, some day it'll be just me and him, and then I'll get to see how well he does without his body guard." He walked away.

Sora let out a breath that had been itching to escape his lungs since he'd caught sight of Seifer. His knuckles shone white against his blue binder.

"Hey. Don't worry about it, alright?" Riku said, punching Sora lightly on the arm. "He's just being a jackass."

Sora couldn't stop his mouth from spreading into a grin, but at the same time he felt heat rising in his cheeks. Why did he have to keep meeting Seifer when Riku was around? _Bet Riku thinks I'm a total wimp,_ he thought miserably.

He remembered something suddenly and glanced at Riku, who was still watching Seifer's receding back with hard eyes. "How do you know Seifer, anyway?" he asked curiously.

For a fleeting moment, Sora was sure he saw the tall boy stiffen almost imperceptibly. Then Riku shrugged one shoulder and said vaguely, "We used to party together."

Sora's face condensed into a frown. "He acts like he's got a grudge against you, though."

"We got in a few fights," Riku responded flatly, wondering if Sora would take the hint. Sora, obviously, was not going to take the hint. Before Sora could get his mouth fully open, Riku slumped back against the trunk of his car and quickly asked, "Hey, do you have plans for Spring Break?"

Sora shut his mouth and shook his head, feeling inadequate.

"Well, I drive up to Twilight Town with Zexion and two of our friends every year, but one of them is going to be visiting colleges. So if you don't mind sharing a tent with one of us jerks, you're welcome to come."

Sora stared at him open-mouthed for a moment. "…Seriously?"

Riku raised an eyebrow. "I didn't think you'd be that opposed to it."

"No, no," said Sora hastily, "I mean—yeah, sure, I'll go." A grin spread slowly across his face, and as an afterthought, he added, "That would be cool." As an after-afterthought, he added, "How long is the trip?"

"Just two nights," Riku told him. "We leave Monday morning and come back Wednesday afternoon." He reached into his pocket and withdrew an expensive-looking cell phone before tossing his head at Sora. "What's your number?"

Riku plugged in Sora's number as Sora recited it and then called the brunette's phone so Sora could save his number. He slid the phone back into his pocket, saying, "I'll call you later with the details."

"Hey SORA!"

"Fine, I'm coming!" Sora yelled back at his twin, who was glaring at him from beside the passenger door of their car. Pulling car keys from his pocket, Sora made a face. "Whoops. Forgot I had the keys." He grinned at Riku. "Talk to you later, then?"

"Yeah," Riku said, giving the smaller boy a short salute.

He watched Sora's brown spikes bounce away. One of his hands drifted upward and forced his hair back from his face before he let out a small, sharp breath. He felt like a puppet, but with all of his strings on the insides of his limbs and a hand in the center of his heart, tugging, tugging.

"Shit_,_" he whispered forcefully. Then again, with a hint of desperation: "_Shit._"

Fifty feet away, Roxas gave Sora a searching look. "What did he want?" he demanded.

Sora looked amused as he unlocked the car. "When did you turn into Mom?"

Roxas's glare clicked up a notch to Murderous and he stood with his hand on the car door handle as Sora slipped into the driver's seat. With a sharp shake of his head, Roxas finally pulled the door open and slunk down into his seat, pouting. He said nothing until Sora started the car and backed out of the spot.

"…That kid has too many piercings," he grumbled.

"What the hell, Roxas!"

"It's _true_."

oo000OOO000oo

With a small pink tongue that smelled strangely similar to the inside of a can of tuna, Vivi slurped at Sora's shoe as if it were slathered in gravy.

Sora gave no indication that he noticed Vivi's fervent shoe-bath. He sat at the table with a cold spoon drooping from his right hand, a cell phone flipped open to reveal a darkened screen in his left. His gaze rested upon a lone marshmallow floating in the middle of a lake of milk, resistant to the pull of the other marshmallows and cereal bits. His face was slack.

Eventually, his thumb twitched against one of the keys on his cell phone and the screen lit up again. Small blue letters against a white background spelled out "Sora talk to me please" beneath a date and time of about five minutes earlier.

Two thousand miles away, Sora's imagination told him, a young musician with spiky blonde hair sat on his bed in his dorm room. He was barefoot, had one knee pulled up under his chin, and hadn't bothered to make his bed that morning. He held a cell phone tightly in one hand and waited for that familiar vibration with bated breath.

The screen on Sora's phone went dark again.

"Sora, honey, your friend is here," said Sora's mom.

The spoon jerked out of Sora's hand and he snapped his phone shut. "Coming," he called to her, jumping up to sling his bag over his shoulder. He paused at the front door to wrap his arms around his mom. She smiled.

"Have fun," she told him, patting his arm. She chewed at her lower lip for a moment before offering a tentative "Your friend seems nice."

Sora stepped back from his mother to examine her face. He sighed. "Mom, they're just ear piercings," he told her, rolling his eyes. She looked slightly embarrassed that he had so deftly read her mind, but her son had waved and loped out the front door before she could defend herself.

Sora didn't recognize the SUV parked in front of his house or the person in the driver's seat, but he smiled when he saw Riku lifting up the vehicle's back hatch.

"G'morning," the brunette said, slinging his pack into the back of the SUV. Riku clapped a hand on his back and slid in to one of the back seats, motioning for Sora to take the other. Zexion turned and offered a nod of acknowledgement from the passenger seat. Sora's stomach somersaulted.

"This is Saïx," Riku said, gesturing toward the man in the driver's seat. "We've been friends for what, four, five years?"

Sora narrowly prevented himself from yelping when Saïx turned around. The man's unsettling gold-brown eyes reminded Sora of a hawk, and two long, thin red-purple scars that formed an X between his eyebrows heightened the sharpness and ferocity of his face. He looked twenty-two or twenty-three, prompting Sora to wonder how in the world he had become friends with two kids in the same year as Sora.

He also looked like he could kick your ass with both well-muscled arms behind his back_._

"Hey," Saïx said. He looked mildly amused.

Sora colored slightly, but recovered and offered the large man an awkward grin. "Uh, so, how do you know Riku and Zexion?"

"We ran Cross Country together," Riku cut in.

Saïx made a face. "We did, but Riku had—"

An explosion of drums and wailing electric guitars burst from the car speakers, causing all of them to jump. Saïx flung a hand out to twist the volume knob before arching an eyebrow at Zexion, who looked down at the iPod in his hand with a decidedly serene expression, and after a moment's contemplation, shrugged.

"Let's get outta here," Riku suggested, clapping a hand down on Saïx's seat. After a moment of squinting at Riku, the man ruffled his blue-grey hair and shrugged. He started the car, shifted out of park, and pulled away from Sora's house.

Though it made him feel childish, Sora couldn't help but watch his house out of the corner of his eye until it disappeared along with the slight, waving figure of his mother. He had little idea of what to expect of this camping trip and even less idea of what to expect from Zexion. He spent a moment fiercely hoping that things wouldn't be too awkward between them, but the feeling was gradually replaced by one of excitement that welled up like a balloon in his chest.

A _camping _trip. This _had_ to be fun.

Forty-two minutes later, Sora revoked his initial judgment.

He could have cut the silence and spread it on toast. No one had said a word in the past ten minutes. In fact, Zexion hadn't said a single thing the whole trip, although he had spent the first half an hour choosing increasingly strange songs on his iPod until Saïx told him to pick a normal song or turn off the music.

The car was silent.

To make matters worse, Riku wouldn't so much as look at Sora. It was like Riku's gaze and Sora's gaze were magnets of the same charge; Riku's eyes would slip away the moment Sora even thought about looking at him. It was almost more than Sora could bear.

"Where are we going?" Riku asked suddenly. Saïx had changed lanes and was heading toward an off ramp.

"We're getting gas," Saïx grunted. The dashboard displayed that the tank was two-thirds full, but no one argued.

The car curved gently off of the freeway and pulled into a seedy-looking gas station a minute later. Everyone could barely wait for Saïx to put the car in park before jumping out with mumbled excuses about getting a snack from the gas station store or stretching. Sora's breath caught in his chest when he saw Saïx standing for the first time, one hand clutching the gas nozzle and the other swiping a credit card on the pump—without being much taller than Riku, the man somehow dwarfed everyone around him. Sora reflected that he was quite possibly made out of muscles, titanium, and angry bears.

"We'll be back in a minute," Saïx said, causing Sora to jump involuntarily. "Could you watch my car? Thanks."

He left before Sora's mind could interpret the situation, so it was already too late when Sora watched Saïx's and Riku's backs recede and realized he was being left alone with Zexion. He cringed inwardly before turning toward the silent guy beside him, who looked at him blankly from behind a curtain of hair.

A minute passed. Sora cleared his throat. "So," he began.

"What you're doing to Demyx isn't fair," Zexion said.

Sora balked. He was slightly shocked that A) Zexion did indeed have a voice, and a full and clear one at that, and B) Zexion had jumped directly to the unspoken issue floating between them. He flushed.

"I'm not—" Sora started to say, but he was suddenly struck by the truth of what Zexion had said. He leaned back against the pump and frowned at his shoes. "I'm just…. Well, it was kind of weird, okay? Demyx never told me or anything."

Zexion looked at him.

"I just didn't expect it," Sora continued hopelessly.

Zexion persisted in looking at him.

Sora sighed miserably. "I'm sorry," he confessed. "It's not fair. It's stupid."

Zexion shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. "He won't stop talking about it," he said. The one blue eye that Sora could see between Zexion's bangs remained trained on something far in the distance. "You're his best friend and he thinks you hate him," he said flatly. "Just tell him… tell him it's okay or something."

He looked over at Sora. He was so pale and slender and frail, slouched against the car with his hands deep in his pockets, but something in his words made everything about him dead serious.

Sora's intestines writhed. "Yeah," he said guiltily. "Okay."

The latch on the nozzle clicked. Zexion reached over and pulled the nozzle out of the car before settling it back into its holster on the pump, then screwed the gas cap back in place. Sora watched his pale fingers work at the cap, mind wandering. Had Demyx held that hand? The thought sent tendrils of heat creeping up his cheeks.

He chewed at his bottom lip. "So… are you two… dating?"

Zexion's hands slid back into his pockets. "Yeah. Does that bother you?"

Something squirmed deep in Sora's chest. He frowned again before slowly replying, "It's going to take awhile to get used to it, I guess. But as long as Demyx is happy, I'm fine with it." He shook is head. "I just don't know why he never told me."

Zexion eyeballed him critically. "Really?"

"…What?"

For the first time, Sora saw the corner of his best friend's boyfriend's mouth twitch upward in what might, with some amount of imagination, be called a smile. "He adores you," he said. "He didn't want to lose you as a friend, even if it meant lying. Kind of makes me jealous."

This time, Sora's blush didn't hold back. "…Oh." Then, sighing, he added, "That idiot."

Zexion snorted. "Yeah."

They stood in a companionable silence as Sora contemplated the expanding feeling of warmth in his chest. It was a nice change. It erased all of the awkwardness from the car ride with no effort at all and brought back Sora's childish excitement about the trip. He grinned to himself.

"Oh, and Sora?"

Sora glanced up. "Hm?"

"About Riku…." Zexion faltered, eyebrows drawing together. After a moment, he shrugged. "If he's acting strangely, don't take it personally. He just gets like that around Saïx."

"What's up with him and Saïx?" Sora asked curiously.

Zexion regarded him seriously. "You should ask him yourself. But not yet," he advised. "Give him time. Riku is… difficult."

_Difficult?_ A question swelled up in the back of Sora's throat, but he swallowed it when Zexion shot him a warning look. Laden down with snacks and drinks, Riku and Saïx were headed in their direction.

Zexion nodded curtly at Sora and pushed himself forward off the car to circle around to the passenger seat. Sora watched him until he felt a light touch on his arm. He nearly jumped when he turned to find Riku standing over him.

"Do you like Coke or root beer better?" the tall boy asked stiffly, holding out a drink in either hand and still half-avoiding Sora's gaze.

Sora grinned. "Root beer, thanks."

Riku handed him the bottle and then pushed distractedly at the hair that had escaped his ponytail. "Yeah. No prob." When Sora reached into his pocket for his wallet, Riku shook his head and lightly punched the shorter boy in the shoulder. "Don't worry about it."

"Oh… thanks," Sora said, feeling the cold and slightly damp plastic against his hand. He clutched the bottle tightly as he circled around to the other side of the car, and the word _difficult_ marched in bumbling circles around his head. Plain old _confusing_ fit better.

Silence seeped back into the car once all four doors had closed and everyone finished fastening their seatbelts. Saïx wrapped his hands around the steering wheel and glanced around at them all. Riku focused on his drink, as did Sora.

"…Anyone else want to pick the music?" Zexion asked.

Saïx exhaled sharply and considered Zexion. Then, shaking his head and smirking, he extended a hand. "Give me that."

Riku and Sora exchanged amused grins.

oo000OOO000oo

When they arrived at the campsite an hour and a half later, it was blissfully empty. Sora stood with his hands deep in the pockets of his sweatshirt, smiling vaguely at nothing in particular, taking deep breaths to absorb the cool, woody air. A flock of tiny birds darted about in a tree to his left like airborne minnows, peeping insistently. His face slackened as he absorbed the sunlight.

Fifteen feet away, Riku dropped a small cooler and missed his foot by a hair's breadth. He cursed under his breath.

"Such a dirty mouth," Saïx scolded. Riku glared coolly at him, picked the cooler back up and would have carried it off to the campsite if Saïx's titanium-and-bear hand hadn't clamped down on his shoulder. "Hey. Don't think I didn't see you staring."

Riku's face darkened behind his silver bangs. "It's nothing, alright?" he grumbled. "You don't understand."

Saïx's paw released Riku and tucked itself into a jean pocket. Shrugging knowingly, Saïx said, "You'd be better off to tell him."

"That's what Zexion said," Riku mumbled in obvious disagreement. He loped off with the cooler.

Saïx shook his head and leaned back against his car. _That kid,_ he thought, amused. _He'll never change._


	7. Spring Break: Part 2

Part 2 of Spring Break. Thanks for being patient with me; I know this chapter's been a long time coming. And thanks so much for all of your reviews! They inspired me write when I needed a little push. Enjoy! 

xxXXxx

"Do we have any idea where we are?" Riku asked, surveying the surrounding trees. They were in a forest, certainly, and they were walking in a line along a thin, winding path, but beyond that it was hard to say.

"Bear country," Saïx said seriously from the front of the pack.

"Bears?" questioned Sora.

"If we meet any bears, I'd worry more for them than for us," Zexion assured him. "Saïx has a nasty bite. Don't you, boy?"

Saïx bared his teeth over his shoulder and growled low in his throat, and for a brief moment, Sora wanted to wet his pants.

"Good boy," Zexion chuckled. Saïx grinned back at him. Sora found the grin only slightly more reassuring than the growl.

This exchange must have been sufficient to answer Riku's question because the next thing he asked was, "Doesn't it seem too gray for this time of year?"

"Be thankful," Saïx said. "The clouds will keep us cool."

"Uh, I'm _always_ cool," Riku retorted. He followed this with a dramatic hair flip for effect.

"Except for when you're hot," Zexion drawled sarcastically.

Riku smirked. "I'm always hot."

"That sounds like a personal problem," Sora offered.

Saïx and Zexion broke into peals of laughter, but Riku only managed a chuckle after reddening slightly behind his silver-white bangs.

"I like this kid, Ri. He can stay," Saïx declared, still laughing to himself.

The narrow trail they'd been following widened and Riku fell into step beside Sora. In the silence that followed, Sora rubbed at his neck—he was a little sore after a night away from his comfy bed at home. He arched his back as Saïx gave Zexion a noogie further up the trail.

"So are—"

"How do—"

The two boys started and stopped talking at the same time, then exchanged flustered glances.

"You first," Sora insisted.

"I was just going to ask how the hike's going," Riku asked, covering his still-fading embarrassment with a smirk. "These idiots aren't getting on your nerves, are they?"

"Heard that," Zexion called from up ahead.

Sora shook his head and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. "No," he said, smiling, "I like them."

Looking pleased, Riku snatched a thin leaf from a bush as they passed it and twirled it between his fingers. He was the most relaxed he'd been since they'd set off on their camping trip that morning, Sora could tell, but he was still acting strangely—too formally, maybe, as if he were trying to impress a date's parents. Sora guessed it had something to do with Saïx. Riku seemed like a little kid around him, like an adoring younger brother.

"What were you going to say?" Riku asked, still worrying at his leaf.

"Huh? Oh, nothing," Sora said with a shrug. He had been about to ask Riku about Saïx again, but he thought better of it when he remembered Zexion's advice. He was burning with curiosity (Sora had enough curiosity to kill a pet store's worth of cats,) but he figured the question could wait a little longer.

"Lake ahead!" Saïx boomed.

"Finally," Zexion grumbled, tugging his navy t-shirt over his head to reveal a streak of porcelain-white midriff. "I'm dying."

"That's because you dress like a ninja," Saïx said brightly, subjecting his short friend to an affectionate hair-ruffle. Zexion ducked away from his big hand. "You do know they make clothing in colors now, right?"

"Don't make me kill you."

"I'd like to see you try, squirt."

Before Zexion could accept the challenge (and judging by the way he cracked his knuckles just then, he would have,) the trees parted to reveal a rocky beach sloping out into an expanse of dark blue water. The other side of the lake was mostly fringed with tall trees that dipped twice—once where a road passed close to the lake and cars flew quietly by, and again where someone had built a small dock with a number of two- and four-seater pedal boats tethered to it. A few of the boats were occupied and gliding slowly around the lake, but they were far enough away that Sora couldn't make out more than the indistinct outlines of their pilots' faces.

Sora's eyes refocused on his side of the bank. Saïx had peeled off his shirt and jeans and was wading into the water in black board shorts, and Sora did a double take. A giant Chinese dragon crawled up the left side of Saïx's torso. It was black, blue, silver, and yellow, wrapped around a bolt of lightning. When he turned, Sora saw a number of stars done in the same style as the dragon curving down the opposite hip.

"Woah," Sora whispered.

"Hm?" Riku stood beside him, clad only in board shorts. Unlike Zexion, Sora couldn't help but notice, Riku was tall, sleek, well-muscled, and lightly tanned. He'd let his hair down so it fell in shining wisps around his shoulders.

Sora's mind went blank.

"Er…"

"What, Saïx's tattoo?" Riku asked. He tossed his head in the general direction of his big friend.

"Yeah, that," Sora said with relief. "Right." He cleared his throat self-consciously.

"Pretty badass, huh?"

Sora nodded. Damn, Riku was lucky. Whereas Sora had freckled shoulders and scrawny arms, Riku had completely unblemished skin and a distance runner's tight physique. It was no wonder legions of girls at school swooned over him.

"He got it in memory of a friend," Riku continued, unaware of Sora's assessments.

Sora nodded again, mentally calculating how hard he'd have to work for muscles like Riku's. A moment later, the import of Riku's words sunk in. He blinked. "Oh."

"Yeah," Riku said, "it was a while ago." He fidgeted with the shirt in his hands. "So… you going in, or what?"

"Right," Sora said, suddenly aware that he was the only one of the four who had yet to strip down to his swim trunks. Saïx was already swimming beyond the protruding rocks with sure strokes and Zexion, standing on the tallest of a number of large boulders, was contemplating which rock would be the best to execute a cannonball from.

Hurriedly, Sora pulled at his clothes until they lay in a pile beside him and he stood in only his black-and-red board shorts. Riku, already clambering over the rocks toward Zexion, motioned for him to follow.

Sora's feet were sure enough on the shifting rocks, but he still took his time. He reached the boulders just in time to watch Zexion hurl himself into the water. The lake happily engulfed his thin body and sent up a welcoming spray of freezing mist that rained down over Sora and Riku.

"Gah, cold!" Sora exclaimed, rubbing at his goose-pimpled arms. He edged along the rocks below Riku until he reached their farthest edge.

They were climbing over a number of large, oddly-shaped boulders, the largest of which stretched out to where the water was deep enough to dive into. Riku stood at the edge of this one. Around its base, where Sora was, a number of smaller boulders created a rocky ledge a foot above the water. These rocks dropped off steeply, giving Sora the feeling he was standing at a pool's edge.

"Come on, it's not that cold," Riku called down from above. Grinning up at him, Sora dabbled a toe in the dark water.

"Oh yes it is," he called back, pulling an exaggerated face of displeasure.

Riku crooked a finger. "Come up here and jump in properly."

Sora grinned wider, craning his neck and raising a hand to shield his blue eyes from the white sun, which had just begun to peep through a crack in the clouds. "Alright, alright, just give me a—"

His sentence was cut short as a clammy hand wrapped around his ankle and someone shouted, "BOO!"

And it would have been funny, really, if the hand had grabbed his other ankle instead of the one he had twisted not long ago, the one that had started to swell slightly after their long hike to the lake, and the one that gave out underneath him when fingers pressed into his foot around it—would have honestly been funny if he hadn't collapsed sideways just then, catching his ribs and then his shoulder on a flat rock beside him and then plunging into shockingly cold water.

Somewhere between the rock against his ribs and the icy water he lost his breath, and it occurred to him as he sunk into shadows that he wanted it back. He moved to claw against the water, but a shock of pain in his shoulder made him go rigid.

_Drowning,_ he thought, _I'm drowning again._ His eyes flew open. It wasn't as dark, true, but the sunlight slanting through the trees and rocks reminded him of flashlight beams, and he could almost taste the salt of ocean water in his mouth.

This was where he had begun to black out last time, where a faceless angel had swooped down from above and grabbed his arm with a strong hand before everything went white and then black. But this time he was fully conscious when a large shape blotted out the light above him and a hand groped through the water to brush his wrist. The shadow above him pushed down through the water until he felt elbows hook under his armpits—he wanted to shove the arms away; one was yanking at his screaming shoulder—and legs kicked hard at the water, knocking against Sora's knees and propelling the two bodies toward sky.

Sora's mouth broke the surface with a gasp. A face collided with his before he could satisfy his ravenous lungs, a mouth and jaw connecting sharply with his cold-numbed cheekbone. He gasped again, his savior's limbs still clumsily entangled with his own as they both struggled to stay above water.

"Are you okay?" the other body spluttered.

Sora blinked water out of his eyes. Partially obscured by dripping bangs, Riku's flushed face bobbed inches from his. The boy's chilly arms still encircled him in an attempt to keep him afloat.

He spit out a mouthful of lake water and took another eager breath. "Yeah," he gasped.

"Shit, you okay?" asked another panicked voice. Zexion's face bobbed into view.

"He's fine," Riku said, eyes still trained on the spluttering brunette before him. Then, to Sora, "Let's get to shore."

Sora allowed himself to be half-dragged through the water back to shore. The numbness from the cold water was beginning to subside, and he fervently wished it wouldn't. He guessed he had sustained a dazzling variety of wounds during his collapse and he wasn't eager to discover the specifics of any of them.

As the shock of the past minute wore off, Sora began to feel self-conscious. He stumbled up the shore while relying as little as he could on Riku's helping arms, then folded down onto a flat rock to assess damages. Riku and Saïx crouched beside him, faces eager and worried, but Zexion hovered a few feet away.

"Man, I though you hit your head on the rocks. I thought you were going to black out or something," Riku said, his eyes searching Sora's face.

"Fuck, you're bleeding," Saïx hissed, gently lifting Sora's right arm from his side. "Riku, get my backpack."

Sora looked at the wound with detached interest. His blood was almost comically red, like the type he'd seen in that B-list kung fu movie when one of the disposable minions lost a limb to the sword-wielding hero. There was barely a dribble of it compared to the streams that Henchman #4 had emitted, but it was the same color, so bright, so unrealistic. Artistic, kind of.

A stab of pain through his shoulder brought him out of his poorly-dubbed reverie.

"Ow," he winced, drawing back from Saïx's grip. "My ribs are fine, but I got my shoulder pretty good."

The giant, hawk-eyed man's fingers performed a quick, dancing inspection over Sora's shoulder. Sora hissed when a finger came in contact with a particularly sore spot, but Saïx seemed satisfied. "Nothing major. You'll just be bruised."

Sora laughed half-heartedly before asking, "You a Boy Scout?" He had already tottered through the Wow That Hurt stage, and now he was cruising steadily out of Extreme Embarrassment and into Act Manly.

"You have to be when you're around these two," Saïx sighed, accepting a backpack from Riku. He rifled through it before pulling out a water bottle and a First Aid kit.

Sora shifted uncomfortably. "It's not that bad, guys; I can take care of it myself…."

"Don't bother," Riku suggested. "Saïx'll do it." He glanced darkly over his shoulder, adding, "Even though Zex should be helping out."

Zexion looked silently horrified. He watched as Saïx attended to Sora's side without offering help or even kneeling nearby like Riku had.

"Leave him alone, Ri; it's not his fault," Saïx growled. Sora reflected that it was weird having the bear-man's scruffy blue-silver hair hovering inches from his face, and weirder to have him tending to his injuries.

Riku's answering look clearly said, "Yes, it is," but he kept his mouth shut.

"I'm sorry," Zexion said finally, looking bewildered. "It was just a joke…."

Sora remembered the clammy hand on his ankle. He shook his head, sending a fine spray of water shooting from the tips of his brunette locks. "Oh, don't worry about it," he assured the wide-eyed boy. "Seriously, I hurt my ankle a while back."

Zexion's expression worsened if anything.

"I mean, it's totally fine, it was just a little sore, so I kinda collapsed when you grabbed me."

The growing glint in Riku's eyes couldn't possibly be relieving Zexion's guilt.

"I'm serious," Sora added lamely. "I tripped when Riku and I were running from some cops at—"

"You were _what?_" Saïx demanded, nearly dropping the bandage in his hands.

Sora chuckled nervously. "That's, uh, not as bad as it sounds. We didn't actually _do_ anything, just… hm."

"You better not have actually done anything," Saïx declared. He set back to work on Sora's long cut, but with a noticeable absence of his previous delicacy. Riku looked like a guilty puppy, but once again remained silent.

Well, great. Operation: Assure Zexion He's Not Guilty had gone smashingly well. Except for the part where it didn't work. At all.

Snap.

oo000OOO000oo

Sora's ankle hated him. Not just hated, in fact—loathed. Abhorred, perhaps. Its sole purpose of existence was to ruin his camping trip, and so far, it was doing admirably well.

The worst part of the hike back to the campsite was Riku hovering beside him like a hawk. He seemed genuinely concerned, and Sora's face flushed at the thought of it. He didn't need Riku's help, and he didn't need Riku's sympathy. It was all stupidly embarrassing.

"Woah," Riku said, catching Sora's elbow when the brunette's ankle suddenly wobbled underneath him. Before Sora could stop himself, he was clinging to the front of Riku's shirt for support as his ankle throbbed.

"I'm fine," Sora lied through clenched teeth, but Riku didn't let go. The smaller boy glanced up in annoyance, but faltered when he saw Riku's expression.

"You'd be dead by now if I wasn't around to save you all the time, you know that?" Riku said.

Still encircled by Riku's arms, Sora floundered for words. He could feel the heat from Riku's neck on his forehead, and it reminded him of their height difference. Riku stared down at him, expression unreadable, then shook his head and smirked. "Be more careful," he advised. His arms fell from Sora's back.

Sora shrugged, feeling like an oaf. It stung to admit that Riku was right.

They walked a little further before Riku said, "Huh."

"What?" Sora asked, limping along beside him.

"Nothing. I just thought—" He stopped. His eyebrows were furrowed. "Is it raining?"

Sora looked up to the sky for an answer. A fat raindrop hit him squarely in the eye.

"Aw shit, guys, it's starting to rain!" Zexion called from up ahead.

Saïx calmly soldiered on ahead. "We'll be back soon enough," he told them, shrugging his backpack into place. "It's just a little rain."

High up in the atmosphere, the gods of rain heard him and took his words as a challenge.

Sora had time to rub ruefully at his rain-coated eye before an explosion of drops shot down from the heavens and pelted them all energetically. Zexion broke into a jog and Saïx picked up the pace, but Riku remained steadfastly alongside Sora, squinting against the barrage of droplets. Sora limped on guiltily.

They made their way back to the campsite as the trails turned to mud. Zexion was there already when they arrived, his hair wet and limp across his face. He looked defeated.

"What?" Saïx asked as Riku and Sora slowed to a halt beside them.

"I left our sleeping bags beside the tent," he said to Riku.

Everyone looked at him in silence.

"Outside beside the tent," he clarified.

"Why?" Riku managed.

"We dragged some rocks and twigs and stuff into the tent when we put them in yesterday, and I was trying to clean it out," he explained miserably.

Another few seconds passed with nothing but the persistent pattering of rain for company. Then Riku said "Sweet" through tight lips, Sora shivered slightly and Saïx rubbed at his forehead with one hand. It was not the best day by anyone's standards.

"Well," Saïx said. Rain ran in rivulets down the angry scars across his face. "It's going to be too cold tonight for you two to go without sleeping bags."

Zexion watched him like a child anticipating a scolding.

Saïx sighed. "Who wants to go camping in the rain anyway, huh?" he conceded. "I'm sure we can find a hotel room somewhere for the night. Would that be alright with you guys?"

Sora glanced at Riku, who shrugged. While being rain-covered made most people look soggy and downtrodden at best, Sora couldn't help but notice that it had the adverse effect on Riku. It made him look like a dark prince, defiant, as if he had dared to face the rain and won. His sea green eyes positively glowed.

"Sora?" Saïx asked.

"Yeah," Sora responded quickly, embarrassed that he'd been caught. The inner Sora cocked his head and asked, _Caught at what?_

"Help me load everything into the car and we'll get going," Saïx said.

As they wiped the rain out of their eyes and trudged over to their waterlogged camping equipment, the inner Sora raised an eyebrow and repeated his curious question. _Caught at what? At what?_

oo000OOO000oo

Zexion's act of leaving the sleeping bags out in the rain had a bizarre effect on Riku. When he'd grabbed Sora's ankle, Riku acted unwilling to forgive him for his one trespass against the camping trip's probability of being fun. However, his second mistake seemed to negate the first entirely. It was like one mistake made Zexion a fool, but two made him a loveable fool.

"Not bad," Riku commented, dangling his legs over the arm of the couch. "Cheap enough, too."

Saïx nodded from his seat at the little desk. His golden eyes were at half-mast. Zexion sat cross-legged on the bed, skimming a brochure he'd filched from the lobby, and Sora sat at the other end of the couch Riku was splayed out on. A wisp of Riku's silver hair had fallen across his thigh. It drew Sora's eyes every few seconds.

"I'm about ready to call it a night," Saïx admitted, hiding a yawn with one big hand. The hand then travelled around the back of his neck to ruffle his hair. "Sora, we should check on that cut of yours."

Sora's eyes unfastened themselves from Riku's stray lock and swung up to meet Saïx's gaze. He'd forgotten about the large Band-Aids across his ribs.

Riku eyeballed his exhausted friend, then sat up (Sora watching as the silver lock snaked away.) He swung his legs off of the couch's arm. "I'll do it."

"I can take care of—" Sora managed before Riku snagged his wrist and pulled him upright.

"It'll be quicker if I help," Riku said. It was true.

Riku released his wrist and leaned over to grab Saïx's backpack. "We can rinse it off in the sink," he said, stepping over a duffel bag to enter the bathroom. He flicked on the light as Sora entered behind him.

Riku set the bag on the counter and rummaged through it to find Saïx's first aid kit while Sora examined the bathroom. It was about as typical of a hotel bathroom as you could get—all white with the exception of the blue geometric pattern on the shower curtain (which Sora figured must have been considered fashionable in some distant era) and an unfortunately impressionistic painting of a sea star hanging opposite the sink and mirror.

His gaze wandered across the white walls until it met with Riku's expectant eyes. Sora looked at him blankly for a moment.

"Oh, right, sorry."

He clutched the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over his head, aware that it was the second time he'd done so that day. He didn't know why he'd thought of that.

He leaned back against the counter as Riku eyed the bandages. "Do you want to pull them off or should I?" Riku asked.

Sora cringed inwardly. He hated pulling off Band-Aids. There was always the moment of tension beforehand while he steeled himself for it, then the sting afterwards of freshly exposed skin. He avoided the sticky little strips whenever possible.

_Rip._

"Ow!" Sora exclaimed, more out of habit than actual pain.

Riku tossed the used bandage onto the counter. Sora twitched away as his long fingers reached for the second one on Sora's ribs. "What?" Riku said, looking mock-affronted. "You didn't look very eager to pull them off."

Sora pouted. It was almost more than Riku could stand.

"Look," the taller boy said, placing one hand on the counter behind Sora, "Just stand still. It'll be over in a second."

Their faces were no more than half a foot apart. Riku's expression was open and serious.

Sora inhaled. "Just get it over with."

_Rip._

The second strip came off between Riku's thumb and forefinger. Sora rubbed at the reddish skin it left behind and Riku tried not to laugh. Sometimes Sora acted like an overgrown child.

Riku worked in silence after that, wiping dried blood from the cut and giving it a fresh coat of Neosporin. When he'd finished pressing the fresh bandages into place, his fingers lingered on Sora's skin.

Sora looked up, questioning. Riku didn't meet his gaze.

Riku's right hand moved haltingly around him until his palm was pressed against the cool countertop behind Sora. The fingers of his left hand travelled up Sora's side and brushed over his collarbone to twine through the chestnut hair at Sora's nape. Only then did he look Sora in the eye.

His cheeks were flushed and his green eyes bright and sharp. He stood still, lips parted slightly, as Sora watched his chest rise and fall near the edge of his vision. All Sora could think of was the ugly sea star on the wall behind Riku, its arms radiating out behind Riku's head like a crown.

Riku stepped forward, one big hand still cupping the back of Sora's head, and it suddenly occurred to Sora that they were in an unusual situation. But however much his mind told him this, he couldn't open his mouth and say it.

_Riku, your hand is on my neck._

The words didn't make it to his vocal chords.

_Riku, I can count your eyelashes from here._

His mouth refused to open.

_Riku…._

_I could kiss you._

Riku must have thought it at the same time because his face grew larger until it blocked everything, even the hideous sea star crown, from Sora's vision, and then his warm lips touched the corner of Sora's mouth. Sora went rigid.

"Did you guys," someone began, and then stopped.

Sora and Riku flew apart. Saïx speedily redirected his gaze to the tiles on the floor.

The silence was agonizing. Just when Sora felt about ready to scream, Saïx cleared his throat and said, "Good. All bandaged up. Well."

He turned around and left.

Sora knew Riku was looking at him, but he kept his eyes trained on his left shoe. His brain was short-circuiting. Where were the instructions on how to respond in this situation? It wasn't like the kiss at the party. Riku had actually, deliberately… Riku had…

Riku turned and left, too, leaving Sora alone, the cool air coaxing goose bumps out of his bare skin. What was he supposed to do?

oo000OOO000oo

The worst part was that Sora and Riku had to share the bed. Saïx took the couch and Zexion had fallen asleep on Sora's sleeping bag on the floor, so Sora and Riku were left with nothing but the bed. Sora slept under the sheets and Riku slept between them, both facing away from each other. They stared into the darkness, Sora's mind skipping like a scratched record and Riku cursing himself relentlessly, until sleep overtook them both.

Sora dreamt that he was walking down a hallway at night. Not walking, really—his feet coasted inches above the floor, but he could still hear footsteps echoing around him. He stopped beside an open door. It led into his science classroom, but the only person there was Riku, and he had his back turned. He was looking out the window.

Riku turned and they were underwater, the surface dancing far above them. Riku's eyes were the color of the tendrils of sunlight reaching toward them. They drifted toward each other until Riku could twine his fingers in the hair at the base of Sora's neck, his own silver hair floating outward like a spiny crown.

Sora woke up with the memory of Riku's warm lips still sharp and real. He stared at the nightstand beside him and clenched his fists.

What was he supposed to do?


	8. Sunny Side Up

I feel I've challenged myself to finish this story no matter how long it takes. It's just determined to be told. Thanks for sticking with me!

xxXXxx

Sora strangled his phone with one hand, growling through clenched teeth. He slid it shut forcefully, and with a careless flick of his wrist he sent it skidding a few inches across the table until it clacked against the apple-shaped saltshaker and spun to a stop.

"Careful with that, Sora," his mom warned, striding past him with a stack of letters in her hand.

"Sorry," he grumbled.

Sora wasn't sorry. He was just annoyed and feeling increasingly lonely as the last day of spring break oozed by. Dem had yet to respond to Sora's last text, and a phone call had gotten Sora nothing but a cheery reminder to leave a message after the beep. While Demyx was busy ignoring Sora's attempts at reconciliation, Roxas had been about as fun as a barrel of eels, snapping at Sora and glaring around darkly whenever Olette's name was mentioned.

And then there was Riku….

"Sora, there's a letter here from Leonhart."

Sora glanced up. _Great,_ he thought, _the way my week's been going, I bet they're retracting my acceptance letter._

His mom offered the letter to him across the table. He took it gingerly—it was in a big envelope, the type meant to keep creases out of important documents. A questioning look directed toward his mom was met with an "I don't know, open it."

He did. Out came a stiff page bordered in gold, followed by what looked like a brochure of some sort and a few other loose pages. He looked at the top sheet with interest.

_Leonhart University is pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a recipient of the prestigious Chancellor's Scholarship,_ Sora read. He blinked.

"Hey Mom, I got a scholarship!" he called out, waving the sheet of paper.

"You did? Oh, congratulations, honey!" his mother said, dropping the letter she had been holding onto the kitchen counter. She beamed at him, blue eyes bright. "For how much?"

Sora shrugged and consulted his letter. _Awarded to a select few,_ blah blah blah, _luncheon for scholarship winners at the beginning of the term—_ Sora cringed, that was sure to be boring. But where did it say—

His eyes stopped traversing the page and remained trained on one spot. He spluttered.

"Do you know how much it's for?" his mother asked again, walking over to the kitchen table to stand behind his chair.

He pointed at a number halfway down the page. His mother craned over his chair to see it.

"Wow," she said. "That's… wow. That covers your entire tuition, if you don't count room and board! Honey, congratulations!" She kissed him on the head and then straightened up, beaming. "Where's your father? And Roxas? Let's get them in here! Ohh, my son's a genius!"

"Well thanks, Mom," Roxas grumbled, stalking into the kitchen, "but really, no need to shout it."

"Sora got a scholarship from Leonhart!" their mother informed Roxas, still smiling.

Roxas's glare momentarily darkened the room. "Yay." He yanked the fridge open, snagged a soda, shut the fridge forcefully, and stalked back out of the kitchen, muttering something that sounded like "can't even fold freakin' sweatshirts right, who puts boxers in sweatshirts?" before disappearing into the family room.

Sora's fingers tightened on the edge of the page, crinkling the crisp paper. Letters in curly black ink were emblazoning themselves onto the back of his eyes, _pleased to inform you_ and _select few _alongside words still too hot to fade—_After careful consideration…._

"I'm going to call Kairi," he muttered indistinctly before pushing back his chair and leaving his mother to gloat in solitude.

oo000OOO000oo

Door closed, Kairi's room became its own universe. It was too color-coordinated and neat to belong to the same world as Sora's disaster of a room, at least. Her lampshade matched her pillows matched her beanbag chair…. It was all a little bit dizzying, Sora felt, as he snuggled his head back into the aforementioned lavender beanbag chair.

"Roxas'll get over it," Kairi assured him, legs dangling over the end of her bed to Sora's left. "Love is just a form of insanity, you know." She brushed absently at Sora's hair with her fingers. She'd attempted to style the soft, chocolately mass once, but it was an exercise in futility—much like trying to work the flips and waves out of Olette's hair. Some things were better off left alone.

Sora shook his head, instantly undoing Kairi's moment of hair smoothing. "I guess. Does he have to be a jerk about it, though?"

"Aw, c'mon, give him a break," Kairi insisted. Something shifted behind her eyes before she asked, "I mean, you understand. You've had a crush on someone before, right?"

Sora narrowed his bright blue eyes in thought. Even though it was his senior year in high school, he didn't have much romantic experience to speak of. If he was honest with himself, he remembered having a crush on Kairi way back when they both used to build misshapen sand castles and he chased her around with whatever unfortunate sea creature he'd scooped up off the beach until she burst into tears.

That, of course, and then a breeze stirred up his thoughts and memories, lifting the corners of pages and flipping them until it died down abruptly, and there were blue-green eyes staring up at him from behind shining bangs….

"Just you," he blurted, alarmed.

Kairi momentarily ceased breathing. "Me?"

As the implied meaning of his words began to dawn on him, Sora hurried to correct any misunderstandings. "Well, yeah," he said quickly, twisting with some difficulty in the squishy chair to look up at her, "back when we were little I always thought you were the prettiest—" But he couldn't finish because Kairi's mouth was in the way.

She smelled sugary, he thought, as their noses bumped together awkwardly and one of her hands moved to press against his cheek. He couldn't will himself to move. It was absolutely surreal. Not happening, could not _possibly_ be happening, but there it was.

He realized suddenly that his mouth felt wet. His entire body jerked backwards, away from Kairi's hot face, and his hand flew up to wipe at his lips. "What?" he managed to whisper, eyebrows drawing together, as Kairi barely saved herself from toppling off the edge of her bed.

A vicious pink flared up in her cheeks before she said, confusedly, "You said you liked me."

"I meant when we were kids, Kairi," Sora responded desperately, his voice squeaking out higher than he'd anticipated it would.

It was terrible, then, watching her face slowly shift as she comprehended his meaning. Her expression slackened, then tightened again as her eyes began to shine. Acidic guilt streaked through Sora's chest.

"Oh," she said, hollowly. The syllable hit his ears like a hammer against a bell, _clang_, and reverberated through his skull. He groped for something to say until she said, slowly and delicately, "Now would be a good time for you to go."

"Kairi, I'm sorry," Sora told her, eyes wide. "I never realized that you…." He couldn't say it, though; couldn't admit to himself that his best friend didn't just consider him her best friend, couldn't, wouldn't.

"Please leave," she said, voice wavering. She had turned her face away from him.

"Kairi," he pleaded.

She said nothing, just clutched the edge of her bed for dear life and hid her face. He wanted to touch her shoulder, reach out to her somehow, but he was afraid she'd break, just crumble to nothing beneath his fingers. It seemed like he'd done enough harm already.

He stood up slowly, watching her with guilty eyes, and hung his head despondently until he regained the ability to speak. Quietly, he said, "Kairi, please, I'm sorry. Do you really want me to go?"

"Please," she responded. Her voice cracked.

Try as he might, Sora could never bring himself to disobey Kairi. So, shoulders slumped in defeat, he left.

And in the silence that followed, Kairi curled up on her bed and made absolutely no noise until her mother knocked at the door for dinner.

oo000OOO000oo

"What is it now?" Sora asked the plastic stars on his ceiling desperately, clenching fists in his sheets. He lurched into a sitting position. "Yeah, Mom?" he called down the stairs, trying not to sound like he was pleading.

"Riku's here," she called back.

Sora's mouth fell open.

"No," he muttered unconsciously. "No. What? No way." He looked sharply around his room, blue eyes wide. "I've reached rock bottom. My day can't possibly get any worse."

"Sora?"

"Just a minute, Mom," he shouted.

He plodded down the stairs, feeling as if a horde of caffeinated squirrels had commandeered his nerves for use as a trampoline. He told himself not to remember the hotel bathroom, the sea star—and of course it all came flooding back in Technicolor as he stumbled toward the front door.

"Hi," said Riku. Hands in his pockets, he stood inside the closed door looking worryingly like a hopeful suitor. Sora's mother smiled at them and walked off toward the kitchen, leaving a pregnant silence behind.

"How's the cut?" Riku finally asked.

"Huh? Fine." With some difficulty, Sora asked, "So what's up?"

"I was just around," Riku said nonchalantly. "Figured I'd say hello and check up on you."

"I'm fine," Sora responded stiffly, surprising himself. He didn't mean to be rude, he just couldn't think straight with Riku's eyes boring in to him like that. It was like looking a leopard in the face.

"Good," Riku replied, but his calm tone belied the riot of feelings struggling through his throat. "You busy?"

"Yes," Sora lied, and then guiltily amended, "I've just got one question left for my English homework."

"I can help," Riku offered smoothly. Sora cringed inwardly. Well, at least he'd get his homework done.

They climbed up the stairs and entered Sora's room in a solemn two-man precession. Sora cautiously left his door wide open before pulling the offending assignment out of his backpack and shoving it toward Riku. "Question four."

Riku read through the question with glazed eyes, then read it again, then gave up all hope and condemned the entire visit as a truly terrible idea. He was about to tell Sora this when something caught his eye—a row of pages neatly pinned to Sora's corkboard, all creased in thirds and bearing fancy letterheads. He dumped Sora's homework on his bed and leaned down to examine the them.

Sora's stomach took up residence in his throat. "Those are just… you know."

"Just what?" Riku asked, still scanning the corkboard. "Your rejection letters?"

"Yes," said Sora miserably.

Like a blind man, Riku ran a slender hand over the letters, one after the other, tracing school names and tugging lightly at bent corners. Sora watched him in shame. When Riku's fingers finally crept to the final letter—the last of five, beginning with the words "After careful consideration, the University of Hollow Bastion regretfully" and continuing on with Sora's death sentence—when he reached that letter, Sora couldn't watch anymore.

There was a flurry of ripping sounds and Riku was standing before Sora, holding the letters aloft. Sora gawked.

"We're getting rid of these," he said matter-of-factly.

"Those are mine," Sora protested feebly.

"We're getting rid of them," the taller boy repeated. "Come on."

Sora followed him down the stairs, out the door, and into his car, because as annoyed as he was that Riku had appeared at his house on the worst day in the history of ever and stolen his rejection letters, he was fairly confident that things could only get better from here.

That, and he'd probably follow Riku anywhere no matter what.

They drove to the beach. Drove there, and walked in silence, in the dark, out to the fire pits where a few people prodded embers or stargazed on their backs. While Sora crammed his hands into his pockets and tried not to feel stupid, Riku fished a lighter and the letters out of his pockets and crouched beside the concrete ring of a fire pit.

Riku pressed the lighter at Sora. The brunette took it hesitantly and then crouched beside him, and as Riku held up each letter in turn, Sora set it ablaze and watched it fall into the pit. After all five had entered the pit, Sora and Riku stood and admired their handiwork.

The letters curled and writhed in a pile of soot, shooting off small flames that sparked and died quickly. They were fading already, Sora thought as he watched them shrivel and disintegrate. In just a minute, just one minute longer, they'd be gone for good, and it was at the hands of Riku that they'd finally met their fate.

While his fingers worried at a thread dangling from the hem of his shirt, Sora turned his attention to the tall figure beside him. The flickering shadows poured across his face brought his glinting ponytail and glittering earrings into sharper relief, so that Sora couldn't decide which was more real—the boy or all the shiny little pieces that threatened to crowd the boy out.

"What's that one?" Sora asked suddenly, pointing.

Riku put a hand to his ear and smirked. "You'll have to be more specific than that," he said. His words made a small dancing trail through the wide dark expanse of the beach.

Sora inhaled sharply, nervously. _Probably not a good idea,_ he warned himself, but he couldn't stop himself from reaching out and gingerly tracing the length of a bar running horizontally through the top of Riku's left ear.

"Industrial," Riku told him. The smile had faded, and his eyes were soft and serious.

Sora brushed a finger over another piece of metal. He expected them to be cold, but none of them were.

"Conch," Riku said, turning to face Sora.

Sora reached across to Riku's right ear.

"Forward helix."

"This one?"

"Tragus."

Sora reached up once more, but the sudden pressure of Riku's hand on his own stopped him. He froze, startled. Riku had stopped his hand at neck height, level with Sora's forehead, and his cool fingers were gentle but firm.

It was difficult to gather enough oxygen to speak. "What?" Sora asked.

Riku swallowed hard, looking for a moment as if he were about to say something. But he pushed Sora's hand away without explanation. He glanced down at the smoldering letters, then out over the water.

The seriousness that had entered the air between them was beginning to make Sora's ears itch. He ground the toe of his Converse sneaker into the sand before asking, "Why do you have all of those?"

Riku exhaled deeply. "Same reason Saïx has his tattoos," he said softly.

Sora struggled to remember. The image of Saïx's dragon soared through his mind, soft and bright against tanned skin, and Riku's words…

"_He got it in memory of a friend."_

Sora shivered.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Riku said. He shrugged.

All the closeness that had developed between them in the past few dim minutes was fading like the ink on Sora's letters. The Riku that Sora thought he knew was flying away in the opposite direction, pulled by something that Sora couldn't see, and suddenly they were worlds apart. Sora was once again frustrated and alone.

He groped for a connection. There had to be something….

"What's up with you and Saïx?" Sora asked. _There. Finally._

It wasn't fair, and Riku looked like he wasn't going to answer, but Sora's blue eyes implored him and the dimness of the beach made them feel like strangers anyway. He stared out at the navy ocean with determination.

"I loved him," he answered shortly.

Sora's brain went on hold. He didn't say anything, couldn't say anything, for fear that Riku would fall silent and not speak again. Or maybe out of fear that he _would_ speak. Which was worse?

Riku shook his head. "How could I not?" he said, helplessly. "But I was just—his little brother, his friend, his…." He trailed off. His eyes were focused somewhere above and beyond Sora's head.

He glanced at Sora suddenly, as if remembering that he was there, and cracked a humorless smile. "Not what you wanted to hear, was it?"

Sora looked out over the water. The gears and pistons in his brain that had screeched to a halt now smoked silently.

"…Sora?"

Hesitantly, Riku raised a hand to Sora's elbow. The smaller boy didn't jerk away at his touch, just looked up at him reproachfully. "You kissed me," he said.

"…Yeah."

"_Twice._"

"Sorry about that."

Riku's hand hadn't moved from his elbow. There were other people around them, Sora remembered, and with a sudden wave of hot embarrassment, he twitched away. He looked down at the dark sand.

Riku's hand travelled up and behind his head, then shakily back down to his side. He looked pale and unsure, the way he had the night Sora followed him out of the gym after the concert, and it was almost enough to make Sora forgive him—almost, except the riot of memories and feelings in his mind made it impossible for him to commit to anything, so he just stood. Stood, and stared at the sand.

"I shouldn't have done it," Riku said after awhile.

"Which time?" Sora asked sourly.

Riku shrugged. "Both times. I should've told you that—" He stopped and shook his head, tried to begin again, faltered. "Fuck, Sora, it's just… It's hard for me control myself around you sometimes," he finished through gritted teeth.

"Take me home," Sora mumbled, and without looking back, he set off toward the parking lot.


	9. Crash

What… why am I even… do people even read Kingdom Hearts high school AU fics anymore? Did I seriously start this story four years ago and leave this chapter unposted til now? What am I doing with my life?

So I guess this chapter like… explains some stuff that seemed to make sense to me four years ago… uh. And there was probably supposed to be one more. Maybe? Probably. I think.

xxXXxx

One week had passed since Sora had first told himself, _Tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow._ One week and every day was the same fight.

Jazz band. Tune guitar, play songs. Pretend every shard of his existence isn't avoiding the tall ponytailed boy at the piano bench.

First period. Second period. Break. Hang out in the music room because Riku never goes there and Kairi never goes there and no one asks questions.

Third period, joke around with Hayner. Fourth period, do math in silence.

Lunch. Eat with Roxas because he understands what this feels like.

Fifth period: AP Art History. Sit alone in the back because Kairi sits with Namine now. Try to smile at her when she looks over, but she never looks over.

Then find something to fill the rest of the day. Anything. Any inane task to take his mind off of all the things he should be doing and isn't, whether it's homework or dying repeatedly in Call of Duty or walking Vivi until he has to be carried.

Rinse, repeat.

oo000OOO000oo

Monday. The world outside Sora's window consisted of silhouettes and streetlights and the world inside Sora's stomach paradoxically consisted of a guilty yawning void and a heaping plate of spaghetti. He sat in his computer chair, spinning in half-circles that ended with a jolt when the chair's arm connected with his desk.

_Doodle-doo_, went his computer, and he spun around in his chair to face an unfamiliar screen name. He clicked "Accept" and stared blankly at the words that awaited him.

_cloaked_retribution: _Hey, it's Zexion

For just a second, he considered ignoring it. Only for a second. Then he bit his lip and threw his fingers at the keyboard.

_geetarboi15: _what's up man?

_cloaked_retribution:_ This may be a little childish, but we don't go to the same school, so I can't talk to you there

_cloaked_retribution:_ You haven't talked to Dem yet, have you?

_geetarboi15:_ talked to him, or tried to talk to him?

_cloaked_retribution:_ Ah. Well. He misses you, you know

_cloaked_retribution:_ But if he knew I was telling you that, he'd probably kill me

Sora rubbed at the bridge of his nose. What was he supposed to do when Dem didn't answer his texts? He'd given up, half hoping Dem would welcome him back on his own time, and half feeling he deserved this.

_cloaked_retribution:_ Call him again.

_cloaked_retribution:_ He's really hurting right now, but he won't tell you that. So I will.

_geetarboi15:_ if he wants to talk, i'll talk to him

_geetarboi15:_ is he on skype?

_cloaked_retribution:_ No. But give me a minute and he will be

Swallowing hard, Sora ran his fingers restlessly over his keyboard. How had he put this off for so long? He hadn't been _that_ bothered by the whole Zexion thing. So Dem liked other guys. So what? Sora wasn't prejudiced. But there was something else there; there was a fear that if he accepted this, there would be greater consequences than he could currently understand. There would be… There would be—

He clicked Dem's name the moment it appeared on his friend list. As his speakers rang merrily, he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, there he was.

Demyx. The best friend he'd ever had alongside Kairi, and Sora hadn't talked to either of them recently. The pixilated figure on his screen shifted uncertainly, moving a knee up toward his chin and a hand to his disheveled hair in a way so familiar to Sora it hurt.

"Hey man, how you been?" Sora asked.

Demyx smiled.

oo000OOO000oo

As everyone around him rifled through AP study books in class and groaned that summer was still so far away, Sora sat quietly through his classes, flipping his pen around his thumb.

It was all there before him, laid out like the picture on a puzzle box. All he had to do was take a deep breath, pick up the stray pieces, and press them into place, just like that. It was all so simple.

Well, almost.

"You dropped this."

Sora slowed his pace and glanced over his shoulder at the paper tapping his shoulder. His eyes darted along the outstretched arm, up to an impassive face that sent his heart skipping into his throat.

"Riku," he said unsteadily.

"This is yours, right?" Riku asked, and Sora realized that his expression wasn't impassive. No, it wasn't emotionless at all, just carefully controlled. Small things gave him away: the twitch of tension in his jaw. The slightly rapid rise and fall of his chest that meant he'd had to run through the throng of students in the hallway to catch up.

Sora barely glanced at the paper as he took it. "Thanks."

"You should be more careful" was all Riku said before walking past, but his tone left Sora wondering if he hadn't meant something more.

He looked at the sheet in his hand, crinkled where his thumb dug into it. Math homework. He'd ignored Riku for two weeks and the boy still cared whether or not Sora got his homework done.

Shoving the paper under his arm, he walked out into the quad.

oo000OOO000oo

"I know I had it," Sora complained, rifling through his stack of binders.

"You're sure you didn't leave it in your locker? What about the car?" His dad's questions were punctuated by the steady chopping of a knife on the cutting board. He piled up salad ingredients while Sora searched fruitlessly for his math worksheet, sure he'd put it in his binder, sure it would be there if he looked one more time….

"Oh." The memory came to him suddenly—Riku handing him the sheet, Sora tucking it under his arm, Sora shoving his book into his locker without bothering to put his homework away.

"Found it?"

"It's at school," he replied, shaking his head. "I can probably do it at break tomorrow."

"Sora," said his father, and Sora's shoulders slumped. He knew that tone all too well. "If you leave now, you'll be back by the time dinner's ready. Then you won't have to worry about it tomorrow."

_Fine_, thought the brunette, rolling his eyes. "Hey Rox?" he shouted in the general direction of the stairs.

His twin shouted back something indistinct.

"Can I borrow the keys?"

A moment of silence followed by a series of crashing jingles told him that the keys had just been hurled forcefully down the stairs.

"Thanks," he grumbled, scooping them up from the floor on his way out.

It was a short, scenic drive punctuated by an infuriatingly long light and enough stop signs to make Sora feel like he was in a bumper car, and it was as familiar to Sora as weight of his guitar. (He'd never understood the thing about the backs of hands—he was constantly surprised by the freckles and cuts that seemed to crop up on them on a regular basis. Familiar? Hardly.)

With a sigh, he slammed his car door and trudged toward the music hallway where his locker resided, trying to suppress the sinking feeling that began to develop in his chest when he noticed that the building seemed dark.

He circled it and tried the front door. No luck. An hour earlier he might have had a chance, but now his only hope was to find a janitor or someone else wandering around campus with a set of keys to the music building. Chances of success? Slim. Dejectedly, he wandered through the quad and craned his neck around a few corners before giving it all up as a lost cause. His dad couldn't get mad at him for not breaking into a building, after all, and that was pretty much the only option that would get him his homework. _Not even remotely worth it,_ he thought.

"Oh ho ho. Lookit that."

An electric shock rocketed up to Sora's throat from his stomach. There was no way…. Why would he be there? Why?

He knew what to expect, but his breath still caught in his throat when he turned and spotted Seifer standing ten feet away. Could he run? Maybe. But he was smaller than Seifer, and the stairs in front of him would slow him down. Maybe someone would walk by, someone else who had a reason to be at school at seven at night, and Sora could just sneak away, but what he had seen of the school looked eerily empty.

"Where's your boyfriend?" Seifer asked, head angled to one side.

_Run?_ thought Sora. _Yell?_

"I'm talking to you, faggot," Seifer spat. He stood like a cowboy ready to draw his pistol, and Sora knew there was no escape.

"Leave me alone," he said. _Not now, _he thought. _Not when I was so close to getting things right._

"Aw, poor baby," Seifer mocked. "I can't leave you alone, Sora. Not until that bastard pays." He shook his head. "But go on, try to run. See how far you get."

Like a coward, Sora ran.

Seifer caught him before he'd even crested the steps, and the hand that bit into his arm dragged him sideways against the metal handrail. Sora stumbled, skinned an elbow against a higher step, and rolled himself over with a fist extended. It connected with Seifer's shoulder.

Seifer grunted but didn't let go. Instead he countered with a fist to Sora's cheek that made Sora cry out involuntarily and sent spots careening across his vision. He kicked out at Seifer's body and was rewarded with a solid thump, but his opponent responded with an elbow into his shin and another punch to his sternum. He doubled over, paralyzed with pain, and suddenly he was drowning for the third time, with no hope of being saved.

"I'll kill you," said Seifer manically, gathering the front of Sora's shirt in a fist. "Tell your brother I'll kill you. Tell him that."

The next punch was blinding. Sora's face was a flash of pain and his vision a dizzy mess of stars, and by the time everything faded, Seifer was gone. Still shaking with adrenaline, the brunette sat on the cold steps and pressed his fingers to his nose to assess the damage. He saw red on his fingers but thought nothing of it, because all he could think was _Why Roxas? Why my brother?_

And then he was sick of it. His face hurt—not badly enough to indicate a broken nose, but badly enough to make his eyes water—and he was confused and tired and he missed his friends and beneath all of that… somewhere, deep in his chest, a little spark of anger had set his heart aflame. He was tired of being a punching bag. It was his turn to hit something, and he wanted more than anything for that something to be Seifer's smug stupid face.

"Fuck this," he said out loud, and that settled it. He shoved himself to his feet and soldiered off to the parking lot.

He slumped into the driver's seat, closing his eyes to ease the hot pain radiating from his nose and pulling out his cell phone as the lights buzzed to life above him. He listened to three rings before he was greeted with, "What do you want?"

"Why did Seifer tell me to tell you he's going to kill me?"

Roxas didn't respond. Sora imagined the motions that went along with the little sounds he heard in the ensuing quietness—a hand rubbing across Roxas's forehead as he sighed, the sliding of Roxas's legs across his bed sheets as he pulled himself upright. An indistinct curse followed by Roxas creasing his brows and biting his lip.

"When did you see Seifer?"

"Not the point, Rox," Sora reminded him, wiping a wayward dribble of blood on his jeans. He was rewarded with another short silence.

"Have you talked to Riku about this?" Roxas asked.

Confused, Sora floundered for a moment. "Wha… Riku? What does he have to do with this?"

"A lot, So. You should probably talk to him."

"No," Sora said angrily. "Roxas, tell me what's going on."

"I can't," his brother said. "I don't really get it. But I think Riku does."

"Damn it, Rox," Sora swore, and ended the call. He grudgingly opened his eyes and stabbed at his phone with a finger until it relinquished Riku's contact information, then hit the call button.

It only rang once. "Hey," said Riku in clipped tones.

"We need to talk," Sora managed.

"…About what?"

"Seifer."

Sora was about to scream into the phone when Riku finally said, "We should probably do this face-to-face."

"Fine,"he spat, jamming the keys into the ignition. "Are you home?"

"Yeah, do you know where I—"

"Yes," Sora said, realizing as he said it that he wasn't sure why exactly he knew where Riku lived. It was something people just knew, he supposed. An important landmark. _Yes, this is a picture of the Washington Monument, wonderful; and here's Big Ben, quite tall; and then here we have Riku's house, note the four-car garage…_

He sped out of the parking lot with one hand still pressed to his nose.

oo000OOO000oo

"Shit, Sora," Riku exclaimed. He shoved the door wide open, his wide eyes scanning up and down the brunette's body. "What happened? Are you okay?"

_Guess it looks worse than I thought, _Sora reflected, and he rubbed ruefully at his nose. He'd forgotten about the blood on his face, and Riku probably didn't find the dark stains spattering his t-shirt very reassuring. Or the bruises on his arm. _Didn't even notice those._

He didn't have time to form a single word before Riku smacked a fist into the doorframe, causing Sora to jump. "Seifer did this?" the silver-haired boy said. It wasn't really a question, so Sora just shrugged, and Riku swore loudly in response. He spent a few seconds dragging his fingers through his loose hair and grimacing at the elegant ivy pattern on the woven welcome mat, and then he swore again and looked up at Sora with a combined expression of fury and concern.

Again, he asked, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Sora reassured him. "Really, fine. I just want to talk."

"Did you call the police?" Riku demanded.

With a fierce shake of his head, Sora said, "No, I didn't. Riku, can we just talk?"

"Sora, you're covered in blood," Riku said, and his voice cracked. One of his big hands drifted upward toward the mess on Sora's face, paused there, dropped sharply away. Clenched and unclenched at his side.

It was jarring to see the tall boy so discomposed. It sent shivers down Sora's spine and spirals of butterflies up from his stomach, and they met in the middle to form a hot fluttering ball. Unable to meet Riku's look, he stared down at the worn rubber on his Converse.

"Sora," Riku whispered.

Sora shivered.

"…Come inside."

Silently, they padded down the front hallway and toward the wide staircase. Riku's house was an expanded showroom—immaculate furniture, artful drapes, original paintings hung on tasteful beige walls. They passed a shiny grand piano with a neat arrangement of sheet music on it before gliding up the stairs. Sora found it all unbearably sterile. He almost sighed with relief when Riku pushed back the door to his room to reveal a pile of half-folded laundry and a number of ratty band posters.

Riku gestured toward the queen-sized bed pushed into the back left corner. He then disappeared into the attached bathroom as Sora stood awkwardly, striving to look as if he weren't carefully surveying the room, even though Riku couldn't see him. It was less disastrously messy than his own, but still disorganized enough to be comfortable. A dusty electric guitar stood to his left, and before him was a sleek black desk strewn with homework, a few soda cans, and a number of pens with no caps, all threatening to annex the space left for a huge, thin monitor and an array of shiny computer peripherals. The shelves above the desk held a large number of haphazardly arranged books. Sora read a few titles with interest: Dracula, Player Piano, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit… Only a few were familiar from his English classes.

He had just caught sight of a crooked photo taped to the bottom of the monitor when Riku emerged from the bathroom, cupping a wad of slightly damp tissues in one hand. He held them out.

"At least wipe the blood off your face," he suggested.

Sora was surprised by the amount of red that stained the tissues. Riku hovered by his desk as Sora wiped the drying blood away, and the moment Sora was done, the tall boy held out a trash can for him. He was desperate to help in some way, Sora could tell, but there was only one thing he wanted help with, and that was understanding this mess.

He sat stiffly at the edge of Riku's bed. "So, what's going on?"

"You shouldn't have been involved," breathed Riku, and he leaned back on his desk at the end closest to Sora. "You weren't, until Seifer took things too far."

"What do you mean?" Sora asked. He barely stopped himself from reaching up to twist a lock of hair. It was a nervous habit that had always irritated his mother.

Riku twisted to pull down the photo Sora had noticed, then passed it over. Sora frowned at it. It was a group picture, and he was surprised to see a number of familiar faces looking back at him—Saïx, Zexion, and Riku were in it, though they all looked a few years younger, and Saïx's nose was smooth and unscarred. With a shudder, he realized one of the cheery faces belonged to Seifer. The four of them, along with the bleach-blonde girl Sora had seen with Seifer and a boy with a gray-streaked ponytail, had been caught in the middle of lifting up a burly tan football player who Sora didn't recognize. Everyone grinned and laughed at the camera, the football player most of all.

"Who is this?" Sora asked, pointing to the boy in the middle.

"That was Rai."

"Was he…" Sora faltered and looked up from the picture. Riku lifted a hand to his earrings in response, and Sora ducked his head. "I'm sorry." He examined the picture for a few seconds longer. "How does this… relate to me?"

"Seifer blamed your brother for what happened to Rai," said Riku. He brushed in irritation at his bangs. "It never made sense to the rest of us, but Seifer was already kind of losing it before Rai died. His parents had just gotten divorced, and his drinking got totally out of control. A lot of us stopped talking to him because of that. Only Fuu stuck it out." He leaned forward to point to the girl in the photo. "That's her."

"Why Roxas?" Sora asked, handing the photo back.

Riku set it gingerly on his keyboard. "Roxas was at a party with them," he explained. "Rai wanted to leave early; he said he had to train the next morning. Seifer didn't want him to go. Rai could drink pretty much anyone under the table and still seem sober, so if you didn't know him, you'd just think he was really friendly. Seifer knew how drunk he was, but Roxas didn't, so he argued to let him go. It was pretty much Seifer against everyone, since they all sided with Roxas. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time."

He rubbed his hands together. "So, Rai left. A few minutes later, he swerved and crossed a median into oncoming traffic. Saïx and Xigbar were on the way to the party, and he hit them. They were hurt pretty badly, and he didn't make it."

Sora made a small noise in his throat. "I heard about that."

"The rest of us blamed ourselves," Riku said with a shrug. "Even if we weren't there. But Seifer couldn't. He had to pick someone else, and Roxas was the person he remembered best. But apparently Roxas put up a pretty good fight the first time Seifer went after him, so he picked the next best thing. He figured if he could hurt you, it would be payback for what Roxas had put him through."

The anger Sora had felt earlier was pouring back into his chest. With his hands on his knees, he said through clenched teeth, "So that's why Seifer thought it would be funny to kill me? Because I'm a weakling?"

"I never said that," Riku assured him in tones of concern.

"But that's the point, isn't it? Is that why you like me so much? Because you get to be my knight in shining armor?" He didn't want to care about what he said anymore, but it still stung him to attack Riku, and he regretted the words the instant they rolled from his mouth.

Riku pulled back like he'd been hit. "I didn't even know it was you, Sora," he said, and suddenly he stiffened.

"What's that mean?" Sora asked. He waited for a response, but none came. "What do you mean?"

Riku leaned against the edge of his desk, refusing to meet Sora's gaze. "I… nothing."

"Riku," he said, but he stopped. It was falling in place in his mind, like shattered bits of glass zooming together in reverse. He remembered the way Riku had said nothing when Sora told him about nearly being drowned by Seifer. He remembered Riku diving into the water a split second after Sora had gone under on their camping trip, as if he'd been prepared or done it before; remembered Riku floating in the water in his dream, hair streaming out from his head. But it hadn't been a dream…

It had been a memory.

"It was you," Sora whispered.

They met gazes and Sora knew he was right.

He went rigid, frozen in place on the end of Riku's bed. Twice? How could Riku have saved him from drowning twice? It was incomprehensible, and it made him feel even more pathetic. He really _would_ be dead without Riku.

Eventually, he managed to unstick his jaw enough to speak. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know," Riku said quietly, shaking his head. "I'm sorry. I should've, I just… couldn't." He crossed his arms tightly over his chest as if he were hugging himself. "Saïx and Zexion told me I should, but I didn't want you to think I was bragging or something. Sora, I didn't even know it was you until you mentioned Seifer trying to drown you. I had no idea."

"You expect me to believe that."

"It's the truth," Riku said hopelessly. "When Fuu called to warn me about what Seifer was gonna do, she didn't mention any names. I don't think she even knew who you were. And when I got to the beach, it was too dark to see much. I just saw someone go over the cliff into the water, and I went in after them. When I pulled you out—"

"Riku…"

"When I pulled you out, you were soaking wet. Most of your face was covered by hair. Fuu ran down and told me she'd called the police, and then I just didn't wanna be there anymore. I didn't want anyone to know it was me. I didn't want you to feel like you owed me anything."

"But… I do."

"No. Just… forget it. I didn't tell you once I'd realized because I wanted you to like me for who I am now, and the stuff I've done for you because you're you; not because of something I did for a stranger years ago." He shrugged once, sharply. "Doesn't seem to matter much anymore. You don't like me anyway."

"I never said that," Sora countered, going pale. Something about Riku thinking Sora hated him made Sora feel cold. It was too much to handle on top of every other feeling Sora was struggling with. Through numb lips, he repeated, "Riku, I never said that."

"Then what, Sora?" Riku threw up his hands. "Just tell me, because I guess somewhere between you blushing all the time and you pushing me away, I missed the message. What do you feel, Sora?" His eyes were bright now. "Anything? Nothing?"

Sora's mouth and throat had become a desert. He swallowed hard, trying to coax an answer from his dry tongue, but nothing would come, because he didn't know the answer. He wasn't gay, was he? Couldn't be. He'd never liked boys. Never liked girls, either, when it came down to it, but he figured he was just waiting for the right person to come along. There was no way the right person could be Riku.

How else to explain it, though? There was the fluttering in his stomach, the electricity from Riku's touch. If he stopped telling himself it was wrong, maybe…

"I don't know," he said finally. "I'm sorry."

Riku pressed his eyes shut. "Then should I give up?"

"No."

Riku looked up in surprise.

"A lot of crap has happened to me recently," Sora slowly said. "There are a lot of things I need to deal with now, and I don't want to give you an answer that…that I might regret later."

Riku nodded. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

Neither of them spoke as they tried to fit themselves into their new relationship, or non-relationship, or whatever it was they'd just agreed to. Neither of them got very far. Riku gave up first and half-consciously reached out to wipe a smear of blood from Sora's temple. For once, Sora didn't flinch.

"You sure you're okay?" Riku murmured.

The subdued laugh that Sora responded with was enough to put Riku at ease. "I don't know," Sora told him. "But I think I will be."


End file.
